It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Cake-mas!

Sad as it may sound, this year I'm thankful to be outside the US for Christmas.  Department stores haven't started putting up Christmas decorations.  Christmas music hasn't taken over the television.  No one is talking about the "it gift" this year.  And, since there's no Thanksgiving here in France, there's no talk of Black Friday.  Ok...I admit...I'm probably going to miss getting up at 3am to go shopping.

Yes, it's true that I'm going to miss being with a bigger portion of my family for Christmas this year, but it's nice to think that without all the "craziness" and American Christmas can bring, we can really focus on what's important for the season and invest in spending time together.

Now, all that being said, we did have a Christmas theme in pastry this past week.  In France, it's traditional to serve some type of bouche, or rolled cake, for Christmas dessert.  This week we did two traditionally rolled buches as well as another cake.  Of course, they were filled with all sorts of yummy goodness continuing my love of "surprise inside" desserts.  Feast your eyes on these beauties.

On the left you have the Bangkok.  We built this cake upside down and then inverted it into a round of prepared coconut mousse.  The result is layers of pate sucree, cocoa ganache, chocolate biscuit and coffee jelly surrounded by fluffy coconut mousse.  This was my favorite cake of the week, combining my three loves of chocolate, coffee and coconut all in one.  It reminded me of a much more elevated version of the coconut cake I made for Christmas dessert last year and made my tummy very happy!

On the right is the first buche we made, named Belle Helene.  This buche wasn't rolled, but instead made in a rounded cylinder mold.  We did the same thing here that we did with the Bangkok in that we built a base and inverted it into praline mousse.  On the inside of this buche you have almond biscuit topped with praline, pear compote and pear Chantilly cream.  Once the buche was fully set, we sprayed it with a gold colored chocolate spray, topped it with melted chocolate glaze and sliced almonds and bookended the buche with chocolate decorations.  It was almost to pretty to eat...almost.

The last cake for this week was a traditionally rolled buche named Montreal.  We have several students in the class from Canada, so this was chef's nod to their home country.  To make this cake, we took sheets of biscuit viennois cake and spread a layer of whipped dulce de leche ganache on top.  We thin spaced frozen logs of passion fruit ganache over the top and placed caramelized nuts between the logs.  Once it was rolled up, we put it in a cylinder mold to set.  Once set, we spread the remaining whipped dulce ganache over the top and used a small offset spatula to give the "wave" affect to the top.  It was then coated with dulce de leche spray and decorated with chocolate and caramelized nuts.  Not only would this be an impressive dessert to serve at Christmas, but it would also make a pretty awesome centerpiece!

A brand new adventure is just around the corner...