Merry Christmas......too early?

Is it a bit too early for Christmas bakes? Well, at least this year I'm not late. :)

I've always been a fan of log cakes when it comes to Christmas food. Hubby said that log cake is just a cake covered in cream in the shape of log. True, but log cakes always has that magic to attract me to take another look at it.

I have never attempted to bake a log cake all these years because I'm really terrible at rolled cakes, especially using the whole egg method. Although egg separation will yield a higher chance of success, I refuse to give in to the idea that rolled cake can only be made by that method. That's some kind of unnecessary stubbornness??

This year I finally decide to attempt it, partly because I saw this baking event - Aspiring Bakers #2: Christmas! (Dec 2010) from Small Small Baker's blog. Seems like a different blogger is taking turn to hold the event each month. This month's event will be held by Passion About Baking. It just gives me some good excuse to bake. *grin*

I did a bit of research on the net regarding log cake. It seems to be commonly named as Bûche de Noël (pardon this mountain tortoise here, but this is the first time I've heard of this term). I'm not sure if there's any difference between this and the conventional swiss roll I'm familiar with. Bûche de Noël does not seem to have any oil in it. The swiss roll recipes that I've been trying contain melted butter. If you know the difference, please let me know.

I've attempted 2 logs so far, both using the cake recipe from Elegant Swiss Roll - Christmas Log by Kevin Chai. It uses only 4 eggs, as compared to some which use as many as 7 eggs! The recipe calls for the whole egg method. I learnt from this video to warm the egg mixture before beating to achieve a greater volume, a good tip indeed. However, I've yet to achieve a good cake texture. I could very well have over mixed when adding the flour and butter.

Presenting to you my 2 Chocolate ganache logs.

The first log...




The inside of the log


The second log...it's starting to snow :)



Oh yes, if you have any tip on how to achieve a smooth edge when carving the lines, please share with me too. I suspect it has got to do with the consistency of the ganache. I always get a rough edge. :(