Making a Jiffy Buche de Noel

Tomorrow is my daughter Ellie's 30th Birthday. Every year she has a Buche de Noel for her birthday cake and tonight I made it for the party tomorrow night. This is a recipe I found many many years ago in an old Southern Living magazine and I have modified a bit. As you can see from my recipe, this is a much loved Christmas/birthday tradition. This is a great, easy recipe and presentation to wow your friends and make it look like you went to tons of trouble. Not that she's not worth tons of trouble, but really this is one of the easiest and prettiest cakes I make. So enjoy, and let me know if you try it!!!!

First we are going to grease and flour a jelly roll pan (heavy cookie sheet with sides).







Here are the ingredients that you will need to make the cake part of the Buche de Noel.

What you have here is, 4 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 3/4 cup of granulated sugar, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and 3/4 cup of pancake mix (I use Bisquick).

You will use a blender and first put all four eggs and the 1/2 teaspoon of salt in the blender and cover and blend until frothy, usually a minute or two. It should have bubbles and froth when done.

Next add the granulated sugar and the vanilla, cover and blend about 30 to 60 seconds or until smooth.




Now add the pancake mix (I use Bisquick) and cover and blend for another few seconds until it's mixed in and blended. Then spread the batter on the pan, tilt the pan around until the batter is completely covering the bottom (the jelly roll pan should measure 15 x 10 x 1 inch).




Then pop it into a 400 degree oven for 9 minutes (8-10 minutes, I do 9 and it always comes out fine.)


While the cake is baking it is time to prepare the area for rolling the hot cake when it comes fresh out of the oven. Lay clean paper towels down on the counter (big enough to hold the finished rectangle cake), and completely cover the paper towel with powdered sugar.

Now it's time to make the icing for the Buche de Noel. Since my daughter prefers vanilla icing to chocolate I'm using that for her birthday, but usually I use instant chocolate pudding, you will need two of the large boxes of either instant chocolate pudding,( or instant vanilla pudding), two boxes of dream whip (4 packets, there are 2 per box), 2 tablespoons of instant coffee and 3 cups of milk.






By now the timer is probably going off and it's time to remove the cake from the oven and loosen it from the pan (while it is still hot). You really have to loosen the sides with a spatula, get under it and make sure it is loosened completely from the pan, then you will flip it over onto the prepared, powdered sugared paper towel.

Now you need to roll the cake up into the paper towel and let it cool for a few minutes. Simply

roll (the long side) all the way up into the paper towel.

While the cake is cooling, I finish up the icing using a mixer I beat the icing until it is nice and thick, like thick pudding. I like to put a paper towel around the front of the mixer, like a splatter shield, until the pudding thickens. I also use this cooling time to clean up the work space a bit.

The fun begins now as it's time to ice the Buche de Noel, almost done. Simply, unroll the cooled cake and slather it with about 1/3 to 1/2 of the icing you have made. Be generous. Completely cover the cake.

Now roll the completely iced cake up all the way. The powder sugared paper towel can now be thrown away.




Now get a pretty dish, I use one with low sides, and using a serrated knife, make a diagonal cut 1/4 of the way down the roll. Place the long piece of cake on the plate first and then place the diagonal cut against the long roll.






Now it is time to completely ice the Buche de Noel. Slather the entire cake with the remaining icing, cover every part of the Yule log. Extend the icing over the front of the log, but don't cover the ends. Don't worry, we are not quite done yet.

Use a fork to make the "wood grain" marks in the Buche de Noel. Swirl the fork through the icing, making knot holes and wood grain lines. Do the top and all sides. Use a paper towel to clean up the excess icing that might have gotten on the top of the plate.

Finally, use powdered sugar around the sides of the Buche de Noel to make "snow" and garnish with some beautiful silk holly or tiny poinsettias. and voila, a lovely Buche de Noel to share with your friends. Often people decorate the top of the log with cherries which I have done and is very pretty too. If you use the chocolate pudding instead of the vanilla the Buche de Noel will be a nice dark brown chocolate color. Refrigerate once made, before and after serving. Enjoy!

Say "Cheese"

There is a painful ritual our family endures year after year. The ritual opens with a long and arduous hunt that begins just as the summer days are waning and chilly evenings require a sweater, and ends sometime in late autumn with a bright flash of light. Everyone in the family participates, there is no way to avoid it, everyone dreads it, everyone breaths of sigh of relief when it has been completed, and everyone knows that no matter how challenging it is, it WILL be repeated in a year’s time. Some call this ritual “The Taking of the Family Christmas Photo”; we call it “The Ultimate Torture”.

As mentioned, the ritual begins with a long, arduous hunt through catalogs, online sites, and shopping malls for just the right matching outfits for the youngest members of the family. For many years this meant matching dresses for our three daughters; however, now there are four little granddaughters to be outfitted. Until the perfect dresses and accessories can be found, bagged, and delivered to their respective owners, the older family members are in the dark as to the appropriate attire for the big day. Only once the hunt has come to a successful conclusion, does the matter of color coordination begin as grammie, papa, moms, dads, aunts and uncles find clothing to compliment the little princesses, who are after all the center of the universe. It is always good when their royal dresses are plaid, allowing for multiple matching hues.

Once the matter of attire has been settled there is, perhaps, an even more difficult challenge: finding a date for the “big shoot”. This is the time when Bob and I begin to wonder how in the world we have gone from the two of us to a family of twelve! Because I am “queen” of the ritual, it is up to me to send out the first email regarding the checking of calendars. Out it goes and so begins the haggling, there are church activities, football games, school programs, work schedules, band lessons, birthday parties, and the list goes on. One day, it finally happens . . . a mutually agreed upon date is found and this is cause for great celebration, maybe the playing of the “Hallelujah Chorus” accompanied by a large glass of wine. At this point it is game on, and the count down to the most intense moments of the year begins!

Keep in mind this is the picture that will grace my Christmas card, this is the picture that will hang on refrigerators across America and the world, and these are the faces that will smile at our friends until the ritual is repeated. The final moments are intense, as the house begins to fill with the four families that comprise our clan. Sons-in-law nod at one another, exchange a knowing look, and steel themselves for the inevitable. Daughters busy themselves with makeup, hair, clothes, cameras, and scouting out the perfect setting. Tension mounts, the lights are in place, Bob and I take our seats in the middle of the frame. This is when the true character of our family comes out. THIS is when all CHAOS breaks out.

Fitting twelve people into a picture—four of them children—is not a small task. Add to that making sure everyone is smiling, facing the camera, and actually LOOKING at the camera and you have the impossible task! Thankfully Bob and Ellie are fantastic photographers, thankfully everyone is willing to make it work, and thankfully Ellie is a photoshop wizard!!!!!!! Seriously, she can remove an arm and place it on another picture if necessary, and zits, runny noses and crazy eyeballs are no problem either. So, the flash goes off maybe forty times and we pray for just one good picture. That’s it! It’s over for another year. Done! I count, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, 11, 12! Everyone has survived yet again. The smell of victory is in the air and the promise of nine calm months before we are called to hunt and “shoot” once more. Our yearly ritual, bringing new meaning to those infamous words: “Say Cheese!”

Hope you enjoy a couple of the "outtakes" from this year and last year along with our final product at the top of the page.

Tradition!

Tradition! I love tradition. It is amazing to me how carrying on a tradition can evoke feelings and emotions, and how quickly tradition can carry me off to an entirely different place in time. Tradition smacks of time travel, with foods, festivities, and time honored practices linking the present to those times and places and faces where a tradition began. People who know my family often comment on how many traditions we have. Many of those traditions include extended family as well, and I know that, in part, these traditions have helped form the very strong bond we all share.

My parents started many of the traditions we continue to enjoy as a family today. I almost forget I’m not upstairs in my twin bed in the room I shared with my younger sister in Tennessee, when I wake up Thanksgiving Day and smell my “mom’s” stuffing roasting along with the turkey. My husband prepares the turkey each year, and it’s our tradition to use my mother’s stuffing recipe. Recipes are amazing legacies and my mother left a cookbook full (written in her own hand and recopied for all her daughters and granddaughters). Our roast beef and Yorkshire pudding dinner on Christmas is also a yummy tradition passed down from my mother, a reminder of our English heritage. Traditional foods fill houses with wonderful nostalgic smells, tummies with delicious taste treats, and minds with the images of those who prepared these same meals in years past. That is the beauty of tradition—the connectedness of past to present and future.

On Thanksgiving Day, my oldest granddaughter, Taylor, was disappointed that one of our traditional dishes was not being served. She looked twice to make sure the strawberry jello salad was not on the buffet before coming to ask me how it could have been omitted. On the one hand I was sorry I hadn’t gotten around to making it this year; on the other hand, I was delighted that at age nine she was already aware of the place of tradition in our family. There will be strawberry jello on the table at Christmas, Grammie has promised and it’s . . . tradition! Beyond food there are already other traditions my older granddaughters enjoy and remember from year to year: decorating gingerbread houses, putting together the wooden reindeer that stand in front of Father Christmas by the grandmother’s clock in the living room, decorating our tree with the family while eating soup and sipping on hot cocoa, Christmas Eve at their great aunt and uncle’s, and the list goes on and on. I love knowing that, most likely, many of these traditions will keep my grandchildren connected to me even once I’m no longer here to enjoy them in future years.

Yesterday I finished decorating the house for Christmas. My oldest daughter was home and helped. Together we freed nutcrackers and tiny carolers from the boxes and tissue paper in which they rest from year to year. Most importantly we unpacked almost 30 nativities I have collected over the years, and put each one in “its” place. As the boxes grew emptier the house grew merrier, every item finding its familiar home on mantle, shelf, table, and hearth. Jean knew as well as I where each decoration should be placed, tradition made the decorating easier.

Now that the halls have all been decked, I am enjoying having all the familiar signs of the season around me. I am remembering my Christmases from years past. Most importantly, the array of nativity scenes speak of the greatest tradition we share as a family, the tradition that shapes and molds our lives, our Christian tradition. According to Wikipedia, “ Traditions can persist and evolve for thousands of years—the word ‘tradition’ itself derives from the Latin tradere or traderer literally meaning to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping—and new traditions continue to appear today.” I want to pass our faith traditions on to my family. I think traditions provide stability in an unstable world, and isn’t that a wonderful gift to give this Christmas? I want to pass them on, not just for safekeeping, but for keeping those I love safe and secure.

Christmas music is playing quietly as I walk through the house enjoying the morning’s hard work. I am transported back to Christmas Eves of fifty years ago, as I peek into the crèche scenes in each room, seeing the tiny stables filled with porcelain sheep and cows, regal wise men and lowly shepherds, and of course Mary gazing in awe at her beautiful and holy newborn son. Standing by these mangers, I can hear my father’s deep voice once more, reading God’s amazing Christmas story from the book of Luke, and for this moment I am connected by this glorious tradition of love to my parents, children and grandchildren. Praying you have a reflective and beautiful Advent season, and hoping you enjoy some favorite traditions from your family along the way.

P.S. I hope you enjoy the photos of some of my favorite creches. The one I'm holding was made by a friend for me many years ago,the roly polo one was given to us by friends who are missionaries, it's from Guatemala, two are very special nativities brought to us from friends from Israel and made out of olive wood, my mother gave us the stained glass one a piece each year for many Christmases, my sister made the cloth one and gave it to Bob and me shortly after we were married, the wood burned one my Uncle made and the one that is sort of modern looking shapes is a puzzle when placed back in the stable and was made by a friend.







P.S.S. Jean couldn't believe I didn't put a picture of this nativity up, it's our VERY first one we ever had and the first one we put up on the mantle before anything else.