Yule Log 2022: Boughs of Holly

Cake

• Yellow vanilla cake roll

Filling

• Pecan praline

• Mascarpone whipped cream

Frosting

• Dark chocolate ganache

Decorations

• Vanilla shortbread holly leaf cookies

• Spotted meringue mushrooms

• Chocolate shortbread molded pinecone cookies

This year, I wanted to use a red and green color scheme and make a more traditionally Christmas-y Yule Log. I enjoyed making leaves last year, so I decided to try holly leaves. I’ve also been itching to make meringue mushrooms with red caps, so that was the basis of my plan.

Upon request from my family, this year’s log was to be a vanilla cake roll with a cream filling. I, however, felt this was a little too plain. I’d long wanted to find a use for southern-style pecan praline, and I thought it would look more like a real crosscut of a log with a thin swirl of brown filling, so that completed my plan.

The real star of this year’s log was the filling. I made a lightly-sweetened whipped cream (stabilized with clearjel so the logs didn’t sag) and whipped in some mascarpone. Layered with the sweet, caramelly, nutty, and slightly salty praline, it was divine!

After some testing, I finally found a vanilla cake roll recipe that I loved. It’s fluffy and moist without being too eggy-tasting. It is, however, formulated for a jelly-roll pan, which is smaller than a half-sheet pan and makes a smaller cake.

I had a large crowd this year (all covid tested and safe) and made two cake rolls, so I could use one to slice into branches. I’d meant to roll one of the cakes along the longer side so that the branches would be narrower than the main log, but I forgot. (Oops.) From above, it made for a somewhat odd-looking “log.” I might try to do it the way I’d intended to in a future cake.

The “bark” is a simple dark chocolate ganache.

For the holly leaves, I went with a vanilla shortbread colored with green gel coloring. I used three different sizes of holly leaf cookie cutters and added the leaf-vein detail with a toothpick. I added darker green sprinkles to the center of the cookies before baking them to give them some dimension. The berries are red M&Ms. Since I don’t put any decorations on my Yule Logs that aren’t edible and delicious, my options were somewhat limited. No one wants to eat a raw cranberry!

I loved how the mushrooms turned out. I used white meringue for the stems and spots and red (pink, honestly) for the caps. I chickened out and didn’t use the insane amount of red gel food coloring as it would have taken to make them truly red. I was worried it would affect the texture of the meringue. With the somewhat cutesy holly leaves, these added another layer of adorableness.

I also couldn’t help myself, even though they didn’t quite fit with the theme – pinecones! I had purchased a wooden pinecone cookie mold and couldn’t wait to use it. I tried gingerbread first, but the cookies lost all their definition. Chocolate shortbread worked better, but they were still not as defined as I would have liked. But, after all that work, I had to put a couple on the finished log.

And that was it! I was truly happy with the way this one turned out. Festive, fun, and flavor-wise, it was completely delicious.