They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand
Whew! This little beauty was by FAR the most challenging challenge to date! The challenge specifically included six elements, each of which was delicious, some of which were tricky, I improvised a little here and there but attempted it all and the end result was a mountain of dishes and a delicious frozen dessert! Find the recipe in all its glory here. Now, pictures and then the play-by-play:
Now for the individual elements, from the bottom up:
Dacquoise Biscuit (Almond Cake): Light and flavorful to begin with, then mine basically absorbed the ganache layer above it so it ended up tasting like chocolate covered almonds. The recipe calls for almond meal, which I didn't bother to find. I just buzzed some thinly sliced almonds in the food processor for a few minutes and it turned out great!
Ganache: Will be showing up in my kitchen again soon! Required you to make a "dry" caramel...melt sugar---then add cream....that was fun, and it turned out surprisingly well!
Chocolate Mousse: Beautiful! I went with the milk chocolate Chantilly option. Never made mousse before, I was surprised how easy it is! Apparently delicate doesn't have to be difficult!
Praline Feuillete: Yummy! Think homemade "Crunch!" bar. I took the shortcut and used rice-krispies instead of the lace crepes....those got stuck on the someday list.
Creme Brulee: Don't get too excited, no blow torch involved. This was more flan-ish. Fresh: good. Frozen: meh. I wasn't a fan of this insert because it thawed more slowly than the mousse so it was all ice-crystal ridden.
Frosting: Yeah. My thought was to use the white chocolate icing to really make my strawberry poinsettias stand out.....no.go. The recipe used gelatine as the thickening agent(never done that with frosting). I was impatient and thought I must have screwed it up. Drizzled some on as a glaze and found the rest all lovely and set up in my sink after the party. :)
5 comments:
Well done. Your log brings up memories of last summer because of the strawberries.
Great job! I think the strawberries are beautiful. You know, I didn't think to taste the creme brulee unfrozen...I really should have. Oh, well!
I used white chocolate as well -- I have 5 kilos of white chocolate in my pantry. It took the glaze over an hour to set up before I could use it. I made a double recipe and put a crumb layer on before the final icing. Seemed to work okay.
Um.. you and the cake are amazing!
Strawberries and all that chocolate. Well done on your log!
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