Claire Saffitz Makes Chocolate Yule Log Cake (Bûche De Noël) | Dessert Person

Hello everyone, I'm Claire Saffitz, welcome to my kitchen. Today I show you one of the most typical Christmas

dessert

s that I can think of. It's a log in AKA U. It's a

chocolate

cake

rolled to look like a log. It sounds super fun. For me, and it's also one of the most fun and satisfying decorating projects, it's basically a Swiss roll, which is a

cake

that is filled and rolled into a ball and then decorated with buttercream and some mushrooms. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. I was the first to call the school 11 years ago.

It's like the most fun holiday baking project. It's supposed to look like a rotten log. It is supposed to look like a decaying log with mushrooms growing from it. Yogurts are very big in Europe and when I lived in France, it was like every fancy pastry shop or just every pastry shop had a uog, but they have become so vigilant that now it is basically synonymous with any type of

chocolate

, but it doesn't have to be chocolate, any type of cake in the shape of a log. I'm going with a classic chocolate cake filling. Chocolate buttercream.

Merang mushrooms. It's supposed to look like a log, not a kitten, and we're going to do it all night and set it up at night. Sorry, it's been a bit of a strange schedule today, but we're starting so late in the day, but we're going to go ahead and have it for

dessert

, right Kitty, oh Felix, can you please tell me how to make it? culinary school, so in culinary school we did one and that was as part of our day a week that we made pastries and it was to learn how to make buttercream and the cake and everything, but for me there is one thing that loves. about U log is that I love sponge cake, I love a creamy type of filling, and I love buttercream, so it's a fun decorating project, but on its own it's a delicious dessert.

I'm separating it into two phases. I'm going to make what is essentially a swiss roll or rolled cake, let it cool a little bit to set and then come back and do the decorating, so here I just have the ingredients for the sponge cake and the filling, otherwise it would be too many things so for the cake I have large eggs granulated sugar cake flour unsalted melted butter my Cary gold cocoa powder if you can try using the dutch process you will have a better flavor vanilla extract baking powder baking soda a little instant optional coffee and koser salt plus buttermilk for the filling.

I have heavy cream 3 oz chopped chocolate I already have this in discs half a cup of fresh cream and a little kosher salt I'm going to use a hand mixer for the cake, but a St mixer really works best for the buttercream, like this Please note that the other thing you will need is a standard size half sheet pan to make the cake, so we basically bake the cake as if it were a sheet pan and then unmold it, roll it and then for the filling , I will use the saucepan and you also need it for the buttercream.

I'm going for a 70s Vibe for this uog. No, I am not a professional decorator as I am. I will never get it to a perfect mirror finish. You know, I want something fun and modern and loose, and I don't know, I'm mostly. I'm trying to make it as a fun mushroom motif. That's what I wanted to make a lot of mushrooms before showing you the recipe. I want to thank our friends at Cary Gold for sponsoring this episode. Cary Gold

makes

salted and unsalted butters from grass-fed cows on small family farms in Ireland. The herb has very invaded keratin, which

makes

it like ultra yellow, it is so creamy and rich in fat that I use it for all my cakes and with the holidays in full swing ahead, I have stocked up.

I'm going to show you how to Whip it into my buttercream, it turns out like the richest, smoothest, silkiest buttercream, but it's great to have on hand to eat on toast or pancakes. It really is my favorite butter, so thanks Cary Gold for more information, you can go to Cary Gold USA. com and now let's go back to the recipe, there are many different styles of cake. I love cake. In fact, the more cake I eat, the more I want it to be just cake. I just love it because I like it. It absorbs delicious flavors and is very light and dissolves in the mouth.

I just love it for the texture, so this is a chocolate variation and it's kind of a chiffon cake hybrid. ​​I love chiffon cake, it is an oil based cake that has a little baking powder added, baking soda to give it more volume, sometimes in another style of cake called um aois, the only boost comes from the beaten egg white, that's where the cake gets its characteristic texture from the beaten egg white, so this One that I'm going to show you splits the difference between a chiffon and a genois. It's pretty easy, so I'm going to start by separating my eggs because again the beaten egg whites are really the key to the light texture of the cake. cake I'm going to start by mixing my dry ingredients.

I'm using cake flour because I want the lightest cake possible, so cake flour has a lower protein content and less gluten development. This is what you want for any kind of light cake, so I'm going to add my cocoa powder, this is not like a super ultra chocolatey sponge cake, just because everything is a little bit light, so it's 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder, but a little goes a long way, this is a powerful ingredient and i. I'm using the Dutch process so you can see it on the label, it might say alkalized or you might see the Dutch process somewhere written on the back, so some of the natural acidity has been neutralized and I like it because it gives it a darker color and I think it tastes a little less fruity, less acidic but more toasted and that's the kind of chocolate flavor I like, so I'm adding a little bit of kosher salt, the chocolate and the salt they go together very well, a little bit of baking soda, which is going to react not only with the acidity of the cocoa powder but also with the acidity of my buttermilk and then the baking powder, whisk all this together if you have cake flour very lumpy or very lumpy cocoa, which can happen, you may want to sift this, look at that cat. in the window he looks very sad, yes, because you were bad, Felix, where he, I don't know, he was never like that, come here, kitten, cat, kitten, oh, come here, look.

It's the great outdoors, Felix, oh, you're great. Mak is great to put. but it really smells like you, me, yeah, like hair, hello, now I'm going to move on to my wet ingredients, so I'm going to create this yolk mixture. I'm going to start by adding about half of my Half of the total sugar will go with the yolks and the other half I'll use to beat the whites, so that's 2/3 cup of sugar, so I'm just looking at it at about a third of cup with the yolks. I want to whip this up, it doesn't take long, you don't have to like the whole ribbon, meaning whip it until it's super light and foamy, but I just want to mix it really well, so now I'm going to add. my instant coffee, which is an optional ingredient, is there as if it adds a little bit of bitterness to the bottom, which I think is a good kind of enhancement to the chocolate flavor, but you don't need to add it, I'll add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and then I'm going to add my melted but cooled butter, it's not cold enough to solidify so I'm going to add 5 tablespoons and I'm using unsalted Cary Gold, make sure you put all of that in cheesecloth. cake that butter that butter that I just added would be oil or but I really like that kind of extra buttery flavor in this cake, so I beat all of that until smooth and then I'm going to add my buttermilk in the next step of This sponge cake is to then mix wet and dry, so because I have this in a larger bowl, I'm going to do it from dry to wet often, it's the other way around, but either way this makes a relatively soft dough, so You won't get many. lumps, so I want to beat this until it's completely smooth, no lumps and this will make it a thick batter.

This is the base of my cake batter and this is what the egg whites will be folded into in a sort of brownie. dough or like a thick cake batter, which is what it is, this is it. Now I'm going to set this aside and move on to my egg whites, which I'm going to whip until I have stiff peaks. I have a very big bowl here. I don't need a bowl that big. I just didn't have another clean one, so whipping four egg whites is still going to be pretty bulky, so you want a bowl a little bigger than this to get the egg whites into.

I'm going to To add an extra pinch of salt, I always add a little bit of salt to the egg whites when I start beating them, it just helps break them up a little bit and get them ready to beat, so I have about a third cup left. of sugar so I start on low speed with egg whites just to break them up a little bit so once they're a little bit broken and they start to get a little foamy you can increase the speed I'm doing with this with one hand. mixer and it's not a particularly powerful hand mixer, so I'm probably going to beat this on high speed right now.

I'm on medium heat and then once you see the mixture turning foamy, white and opaque, you can start adding. your sugar and the key to beating the egg whites and sugar is to go pretty slow. You want the sugar to have a chance to dissolve, so I'm slowly adding the sugar in a cascade as I beat this. I'm going to increase the speed. a little bit now that I've added all my sugar, I want to continue beating this until I have a super voluminous dense glossy mixture that forms a stiff look and I'll show you what that looks like, have a little patience.

This may take a few minutes in a St mixer, which you can do with the whisk attachment. This will probably go twice as fast, so you can see it's starting to get shiny. He is holding the whisk marks. On the medium peaks I see that it's not like falling completely, but it's not standing upright, this is a medium peak, but we have to keep moving forward, so back off, you don't want to go beyond the firm peaks, so I think I'm almost there. Over there, so let's go ahead and see to test. I'm lifting the beaters up and watching the egg whites form little peaks on the end of the beers and watching them stand upright.

These are firm peaks and now. This is the fun part. I love any recipe where I can mix egg whites into a chocolate batter. Maybe you've seen the cover of my book. What is for dessert. That's the cover because it's so beautiful. This chocolate mixture is quite thick. Egg whites are super light, so usually whenever you add them to something, there's some kind of initial step where you quickly mix in a portion of the egg whites and that helps lighten the batter, which which then makes it easier to incorporate. rest, so I'll start by adding about a third of the egg whites and then I have this big, wide, flexible spatula that's really handy and I do this folding motion.

I cover this extensively in what it is for Desert, it is a basic technique. but it may not be very clear to anyone who's never done it before, so folding is a way of mixing two things that have a lot of air in them to preserve that lightness and you're basically taking what's at the bottom of the bowl. and like bringing it to the top and then turning it and repeating it until everything has been mixed together smoothly so you can see. I'm turning the bowl with one hand and turning the spatula with the other and the wrench with any sponge. cake or anything like lightened egg white is you don't want to over mix so now I'm going to scrape out the rest of the egg whites frankly this bowl is probably a little small for this but the remaining egg whites scraped out.

I'm working fast because as soon as the egg white foam comes into contact with the fat it will destabilize it, so working fast will help preserve that texture and now I have this beautiful chocolate dough, it's super light. I have a half sheet mold. It has a side of 1 inch. I took some butter and greased just the bottom of the pan so I could press a piece of parchment into the bottom, but not the sides, and don't grease the sides where you actually want the dough to be. like hold on to the pan a little bit and I didn't butter the parchment, this is all going to go into my pan.

One thing about Swiss rolls that I learned after years and years of making them not so well is that they are thinner. cake layer and a thinner filling layer than you think and now I just want to spread this into an even layer. I always thought the cake was too thick and then I added too much filling and then it looked messy and I didn't do that. I don't get a good spiral, so I've learned my lesson many times, so I want to get to the edges. I know she looks thin. I just take an offset spatula.

This is small. You can use a normal size one. I have a loose grip and I just hold it at a slight angle but as parallel as possible to the work surface and then I just slide it across the surface trying to move anywhere that is thicker so I can level it all over my oven already.It's at 350. That's very important. You don't want this dough to sit here while you wait for your oven because it's going to deflate a little. This is very thin. It's going to bake very quickly. I would say 10 to 15 minutes. I'll check it after 10.

Some people do this to break up any big bubbles, it doesn't really matter, not in this case I'm going to set my timer for 10 minutes so I'm going to need a big, clean tea towel. I promise you they're clean, they're like Ultra stained even. Even though I've washed them 1 million times, I'm actually going to roll it this way, so when the cake is ready, I'll invert it like it's out of the pan onto my towel, that I'm going to prepare and then he'll leave. to roll up inside the towel like this, like you're making cinnamon rolls, but instead of filling it's the towel and what happens is the towel is there to absorb the steam so the cake doesn't get soggy and you're working out.

It's wanting to have that shape when you go to fill it and roll it up again. If you don't do that and just let it cool, it's almost inevitable that you'll get cracks. I'm going to have this ready to go. so as soon as it comes out of the oven I can put it on my prepared towel, I'm going to take some cocoa powder, which happens sometimes, especially with a sponge cake that has that beaten egg, you get kind of a weird foamy layer. on top it can be a little sticky. The egg whites are super sticky and can stick to the towel a little, so I'm going to put a small layer of cocoa powder to help absorb it.

Steam it and prevent it from sticking, so let me grab a small strainer and a spoon. I'm also grabbing that little offset spatula so I can use it to help loosen the cake from the sides when it's done, this will make this towel very messy, but it can always be washed. I don't need to make a particularly thick layer of this. I basically want to cover an area the same size as my tray, it smells done and after just 10 minutes it's done so the surface of the sponge is matte. instead of shiny and when I press it it gives me a nice little springy response.

This part is a little scary. Get it, but here's what you're going to do: you're going to cut off the sides just to release the cake anywhere. it may be sticking and you want to work quickly because you want the cake to be very hot so now I'm going to invert this onto my prepared towel so now I want to peel off the parchment what usually happens with a sponge layer is that the edges along those four sides are going to get a little drier and a little more brittle than the rest of the sponge, but that's okay because we're going to trim this, this little edge of the towel is going to come up and I'm going to start rolling it up. and you want to roll it, I don't want to say as tight as possible because you can roll it too tight but you don't want to roll it loose, basically like a cinnamon roll. then it's going to rest on your seam, you're going to keep rolling until it's resting on that and then this is just going to cool, so while it's cooling, I'm going to make my filling and then you're going to unroll it, put the filling in and roll it again. throw it in the refrigerator, you're halfway to filling the filling is super simple with a traditional Swiss roll, often what you find is like a whipped cream filling, but the problem with that is that if you let it sit for too long, the sponge cake is like it absorbs the whipped cream and it deflates and then the villa disappears, so I want to make whipped cream because I love how light it is, I think texture-wise, you know, it's perfect for filling the cake, but I don't want to add gelatin as a stabilizer because then you have to keep it cold, so I love to use for general baking a high fat cultural dairy product as a stabilizer, so like a sour cream, here I'm using fresh cream.

The nice thing about this is that it sets and stabilizes the entire mixture naturally, so I take a little bit of heavy cream and half a cup of fresh cream. I also have 3 ounces of chopped chocolate, they're actually just in these like little disks, this is milk. chocolate I'm kind of a milk chocolate lover, but I'm particular about it because most of the time it can be super sweet and I don't love that, but this is a really good milk chocolate and I'm using it because it's going to sweeten very lightly the filling. I'm not going to add any additional sugar if you want something that's really bittersweet you can use it like dark chocolate so I'm going to start by pouring about half a cup of cream or half of the total it's a cup into my saucepan and then I'm going to add my chocolate in here so I'm going to take it on the stove and melt it, so I'm going to whisk it like On medium low heat, you don't want to get too hot until the chocolate melts into the mixture is smooth.

It should only take a couple of minutes. As soon as I saw those last little bits of chocolate starting to melt and disappear, I took it off the heat. so I brought it here and now everything has completely melted and it's super soft and shiny and pretty. Now I'm going to add the rest of my cream. The cream has been out of the refrigerator for a while, so there it is. kind of cold but not cold, so I want to beat this slowly so it's incorporated well and then I'll add my Creme Fresh. So whisk all this together and I'll add a pinch of salt, actually I meant to add. that before, so now this is the base for this kind of slightly choco filling, so it's great because I was adding a kind of cold cream and fresh cream to the mixture, but I want it to be a little bit colder because that will help it is beaten. it lifts up very easily so I have a container of ice water the ice maker is malfunctioning so I only had some ice but I had a bag of ice so I have it here and how am I going to make it this?

Well, just Say that cooled it down, you can dip it in a bowl with a little bit of ice water and you just need to get the ice water halfway up the sides of the pot. I'm going to beat, this won't take long. I'm using a stainless steel pot which has excellent heat transfer so it will cool quickly, so it's already thickening which means it's cooling. Felix, you're like on timeout right now. Did you just lick that? It does not work. I can take this out of the ice water to dry the bottom just because I don't have as many bowls and I like not having to wash a bunch of dishes.

I'm going to empty this, dry this bowl and I can whisk. my filling right here, you know, a cup of cream is not that hard to whip and adding chocolate and fresh cream will actually make it easier, so I'm going to whip this until it gets basically medium peaks. you want it to be too soft because it can come off the roll, you don't want it to be too firm because if you go too far it's hard to spread it across the cake and you could definitely get out the hand mixer if you do that. I wanted this would be really good if it was coffee flavored, okay, I'm going to add a little bit of vanilla, calling an audible a little bit of vanilla.

I think the best way to do this would be to add a little more instant coffee, maybe a little. instant coffee dissolved in like a little bit of coffee, so it's really going to be mocha. I think I have coffee left. Is there any coffee left here as of today? There's one tablespoon left, it's half a tablespoon, it could be enough and I'll go. to make a teaspoon of instant coffee, why didn't I think of mocha coffee? My teaspoon and a half of coffee plus a teaspoon of instant coffee will be added. It will definitely set more as it cools because of the chocolate I used.

I have there, in addition, that fresh cream will continue, basically you will like to culture the cream and prepare it so that it is in a nice medium peak. Mmmm, that good sponge feels pretty cold, so I'm going to unroll it now that we can fill it. do this slowly, this is where cracks can occur, pay attention to how it releases from the towel, make sure it doesn't stick and cracks are most likely to occur in the initial fold where it is tightest around itself, so what you want Really be careful as you go towards the end, if you have cracks continue like you can patch them and get them wrapped if you wrap it well after filling it, but this looks great here, this first Edge has that memory of the curve, so it will just sit still.

I'm actually going to turn it 180 degrees so I can fill it from the other side, so now the filling is going to continue, some of this is going to be squeezed out. Now I can tell you that as I spread the filling, I'm actually taking care of completing this curve that will help me get a nice even spiral and then the rest just wants to go in one even layer, leave a little bit of an edge on the far edge this It's too much filler. I think I'll remove some. I just made this mistake many times.

It's okay if you overfill it basically everything that happens is like you are your spiral. It may not be as defined and may spill over the sides, but nothing serious. I can keep it in the towel, which is very convenient and I'm going to roll it up again, but this time the towel is just going to stay out, so what you want to do is keep the towel gathered in your hands while you roll it up, but once you have everything in the shape of a trunk, I'm going to wrap it with the towel and that will help. keep it in shape, the towel will get me started and I'm getting that first Edge in, look how I'm gathering the towel in my hands as I roll well, so now I'm on that final Edge.

There will definitely be some spillage, but hey, here we go, here's my filled roll. I'm going to take these edges, I'm tucking the towel underneath and then I'm going to take the whole thing and I just fold it like this so I have this nice thin log shaped cake, this has to cool so I want the filling to set, it's all going to melt. , it will harden and cool. at least 2 hours in the refrigerator and while that happens, you can make your mushrooms. I'm going to show you how to make those with your buttercream or you can let it sit overnight and put it together the next day and I feel like there are enough steps for that.

It's probably better, but we could stay all night. I think it has to go here. I want people at home to know. I know this refrigerator is a disaster. I can use my baguette shell. I'm using my baguette peel to transfer this. I don't really want to just pick it up because it's pretty fragile, so I'm just going to slide it on. It doesn't seem like a common thing, no, no, I know, no one has a baguette shell. Instead, you can simply swipe it. the back of a sheet pan like the same sheet pan you use to bake it in, flip it over and you can just slide it back this is how I'm going to transfer this to the refrigerator oh, I was so excited to use that I think, secretly, my favorite part about making Bush Noel is that I get to make the cutest little mering mushrooms.

I love making anything with mering, it's an amazing substance, it's a mixture of egg whites and sugar and you can make anything with it. so first I'm going to show you how I prepare the mushrooms. I need to make the mix. I don't need a huge amount so I won't use that much, it's 75g of egg whites, it's like two or three large ones. It's going to go in my stand mixer, you can do this with a hand mixer, it will be a lot easier in a stand mixer and I'm going to use the St mixer for the frosting so you might as well get that.

On top of that, I'll add a little bit of kosher salt, just a pinch, just a pinch of cream of tartar, like just the edge of a knife or the back of a spoon, probably like an eighth of a teaspoon, the salt will help. Breaking up the egg whites and the cream of tartar is just going to help stabilize them, so I'm going to turn this mixer on so when they look nice and foamy and white and kind of opaque, I can start adding my granulated sugar. I'm adding two types of granulated sugar and then powdered or candied or sugar, granulated first and I'll add it slowly because it needs time to dissolve.

You don't want to have undissolved sugar in your mer because it can make it grainy and it can also encourage crying, which is where the sugar draws out the liquid and it becomes puddle-like and wet, so once I've added all the sugar, I'm going to turn the speed up to medium high and I want to leave this like this until the mixture is super voluminous, it will be at least quadruple in volume and it will be very dense and glossy and then I'll add the fudge. It'll only take a couple of minutes, so now I have this nice, firm look at the end of the whisk.

I'll show you that the mixture makes this beautiful peak, but it doesn't fall over, it stays upright, that's how I know it's ready. I'm going to add my powdered sugar, if your powdered sugar is really lumpy go ahead and sift it, but whisking will really get rid of a lot of the lumps so you don't have to worry too much. add it all at once and then turn on the mixer on low heat so that it is incorporated and then we are going to increase the speed of the mixer again to medium high and we are going to beat until we reach firm peaks again because the sugar tends to dilute the texture of the mixture and we want it to have that shiny, hard mixture again.

At the end I'm also going to add a little bit of vanilla paste, so I'm going to turn it up again. This will take a few minutes maybe one or two as it is almost ready, you can often tell it is getting close to that peak stiff point when the mixture starts to build up insideof the whisk or actually it goes a little bit more, stay there and we're going to add the vanilla. You know, they're much more decorative than flavorful, but a little bit of vanilla doesn't hurt, so maybe I'll just mix it for another 30 seconds and then I'll put it in my pastry bag, which I put a round in. a big round toe, so let's see what it looks like, I think.

We're here, here's our nice, firm look. It's important that you get the mixture through to this stage because we want it to have a lot of structure. It is very important that it maintains its shape because we want mushrooms with good shapes. We're definitely going to be. Able to fit a lot of mushrooms so you can see when I filled the piping bag. I folded the top of the bag down, which helps you fill it cleanly, so you can use a bench scraper or bowl scraper. This also helps you clean the sides. you want to fit everything in the bag, no big air pockets, we're going to place the stems and caps separately and then fuse them together.

I'm going to start with the stems because I need the mixture. It's actually at its stiffest when I pipe the stems and what happens sometimes is that you end up working the mixture with your hands at this end of the bag, so the last ones you pipe don't have as much structure, so I'm going to take the bag, I'm going to hold it up and down and place it on the baking sheet, apply a little bit of pressure and then lift it up, that's going to be a stem which is really weird, what do you mean?

It looks weird It doesn't look weird By weird you mean great How many stems are you thinking Chef? I want at least a dozen mushrooms so I have room to play, so I'm going to use a dozen that I can always pipet. Towards the end I'm going to make them vertical because I don't want them to have a flat side or face. Can you make them higher or not? It's a little difficult to get more volume without gaining weight, but I'm going to do them. for the little mushrooms I didn't make them like a huge uog, look how they get to that nice little peak, that peak is basically going to break off so it has a little bit of a flat top that I can stick to. to the mushroom cap now I'm going to make the caps like I want them to be like Smurf or like Super Mario Brothers like a little psychedelic that look like the magnet I don't know where I found these magnets they're cute it's like a hat The shape is a a little bit wider at the base and it's not really rounded, it's a little more pointed, like a witch's hat, so I don't know exactly how I'm going to achieve this, but let's see, I'm going to start closer. no no no no no right, that works no, I like that one.

I like that it's a little flatter so I start pretty close to the baking sheet and then slowly lift but also lower the pressure that my oven is on. 200 can you make a big one, a very tall one? Yeah, just make a big one for fun. I really don't think it should be much higher than that, but I haven't even shown you the super fun part, I don't know. If I can handle that right, it's literally a Friday night at 8:30. You don't want to be doing this right now. I'm going to use a little bit of sugar on my finger because some of these have spikes, which I don't do. and I don't want them to be, I want them to be kind of flat on top, so I have my oven on 200, these are going to cook at a very low temperature, anything above 200 250, you often start to get a little bit of Browning which, honestly, in these wouldn't be so bad.

I'm going to put some cocoa powder in my strainer and it's not a very fine strainer, so I'm going to get a lot of cascading cocoa. If you want to know the color and the vibe I'm going for, this mug is cute, so now just with the caps I'm going to do some decorations with cocoa powder and in the spirit of my mushroom magnet. I am going to wear. I found something there that works. This skimmer. I'm going to hold the spoon over each lid as close as I can and then sprinkle some cocoa over it.

You think not? I work that look on that face what you have little faith oh my God, it looks so what you think didn't work, it worked you, this is the best thing I've ever done in my life, you look so good, you look, I love it , they see each other. Alright, you could very lightly spray some of them; They will take a little while to dry, but they are also small and have a lot of surface area, so I'm not exactly sure how long at 200. I'll start checking after 30 minutes. I think they'll probably take longer than that, but then I can remove them when they're done and then we'll try that little experiment of turning up the oven temperature to get a little bit of color left.

It's time to make the glaze for the buan no, this is a frosting I made earlier is from the dessert

person

is the silkiest chocolate buttercream. I'm using it because it has the best flavor and holds its shape very well. The only thing I really want to say about this buttercream is that it's important to have all the ingredients ready because it's a bit of a dance, you have to like cook something in there, mix something in here so you don't want to. be like fighting for butter when you're in the middle of it, so in terms of ingredients it's pretty simple, which I say almost every time I have two large egg yolks plus two whole eggs, so this is a style of buttercream that It is actually based on yolks. instead of egg white like a swiss mering buttercream or an italian mering buttercream they are based on egg whites this has yolks and whole EG so it comes out like a super rich and dense buttercream .

I have some kosher salt, 2 granulated sugar and 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter at room temperature. I'm using Cary Gold, which is the smoothest, silkiest, most shiny frosting. A little vanilla extract, a little water that I'm going to use with sugar to cook a syrup, and lastly, 8 ounces of good dark chocolate. has melted and cooled, the special equipment definitely needs to use a sand mixer for this, it is simply impossible to do it like a hand mixer while simultaneously pouring, you need the power of a St mixer, so I have the whisk attachment and then I have a small saucepan where I'm going to cook the sugar syrup and I need an instant thermometer so I have one here.

You can use a candy thermometer. My butter is at room temperature. That is also very important. My chocolate is already cooled. I'm going to start by putting my eggs in the mixer, I'm going to add a pinch of salt, a really generous amount of salt because salt is really good in this buttercream, so I'm going to run this on medium speed and start on low speed to be able to break everything. and then over medium heat while that's going, I'm going to combine the water and the sugar in my saucepan and I'm going to go to the stove and cook it.

We're going to do it, so the idea is that we want these eggs to be super foamy, light and voluminous. and at that point we want our sugar to be ready to cook as well. I'm going to cook it at 238 fah, which is an important precise temperature for this recipe and it's a bit of a dance because I want my sugar syrup to finish. I cook well since my eggs are in that optimal kind, like foamy, frothy texture, so I'm going to take my sugar, put it in my little saucepan, pour in the water. I often like to pour the water around the edges of the pan because it helps prevent crystallization.

Now I'm going to take this to the stove and cook it so it starts to boil. I know I put it on turbo because I didn't want to wait, but it's not long either. water, the sugar dissolved and I have this kind of clear solution, at which point you want to stop stirring. The fly bothers me a lot. I want to stop stirring and I'm just going to turn the pan and I'm going to take the temperature and I want to slowly raise it to 238 and hopefully when it's at that temperature my eggs will also be at their nice end point, but they look good so far .

Okay, that happened faster than I thought, but my sugar syrup is gone. about two degrees higher, okay, so now I have the egg whites looking super foamy and ribbon-like, they hold the whisk marks, they're voluminous. Now is the right time to pour my sugar syrup into my egg, so I'm going to do this slowly, this doesn't have to be intimidating, you're scary, you just want to be a little careful and I want to pour this down the side of the bowl. right at the point where I see the eggs meet the bowl. What I don't want to do is pour it so it hits the whisk wires and the whisk, then I'd like to whisk it and have it all stick to the side of the bowl, so I just want to avoid the whisk, but I understand. fully into the pot once I've added all the sugar syrup I'm going to turn the mixer speed up to medium high and let it sit for several minutes and when it hits the side of the bowl it's warm and I want to let it set. mix until it's cool to the touch and that's because when I add my butter, which is at room temperature, if it's a little bit warm, it's going to melt the butter and I want to keep all of that.

I like a lovely light and airy texture, so now that the sides of the bowl are relatively cool to the touch, I know it's room temperature, so I'm going to go ahead and add the butter and have the mixer continuously blend on medium high. and I'm just going to add the butter a couple tablespoons at a time. I don't want to overwhelm the mixture. I want to create a nice soft emotion between the butter and the eggs. Look how the texture fell. See how it is. more liquid, so it's still a little bit warm, but it will come back together, it was a little bit warm and it melted the butter, but it will come back to a boil, that's very common, so if you're mixing the butter and it all gets thick and runny, don't worry, that's pretty normal when you make a buttercream that contains cooked sugar because it could be even a few degrees too hot and the butter melts, it's okay, just keep whisking, add the butter gradually. eventually the temperature will drop and it will be whipped again and it will become nice and fluffy again, it's a matter of temperature, the temperature just has to even out and the more it is mixed, the more it comes into contact with air, the more it becomes room temperature, that is what is needed.

I wanted to, so I added all the butter, it didn't take long, although it did get a little thick, it eventually came back together and I have this incredibly beautiful, smooth, shiny buttercream, but now I'm going to add my chocolate of any kind. of buttercream, I think especially European buttercream on its own, it just doesn't have an amazing texture, but on its own it doesn't have much flavor, which is why I love making chocolate buttercream because not only does it have chocolate and that bitterness that I want and it balances everything, but also makes it even silkier, so I'll add a little vanilla extract, maybe 2 teaspoons, so it's important that the chocolate is melted but cooled to room temperature, because the same principle if you add something. heat with your buttercream, you're just going to melt the butter again.

I like a chocolate that's around 60%, if you have a favorite baking chocolate, go ahead and use that, something pretty good quality, oh gosh, I have a track record of actually getting that. messy with melted chocolate, make sure to scrape all that up. I'm using the beater wires to help me scrape, so I'm going to beat this on medium speed if you want to get a little more air in. You can increase it to medium high, but I just want to incorporate the chocolate and make everything super smooth. Incorporated. I'm going to scrape the bottom of the bowl because you often have a little bit of buttercream stuck on the bottom and then we're done. sorry and then we're ready to decorate this is what this buttercream looks like it's so soft and so silky and so delicious it takes a lot of effort but it's worth it so I can feel it feels nice and solid.

The filling has hardened. It no longer feels super delicate. I have a plate here that I'm going to serve it on. It looks really nice, so you can see the ends where it's kind of squashed a little bit. Okay, so I'm actually going to Leave the ends untrimmed because I think it looks better to trim them after I've made the buttercream, but what I like to do is basically trim one end just a little bit, let's see what that looks like. Spiral, not bad. They have turned out a little tighter, save this to eat later, then I'm going to cut a length that is about a third of the total and I'm going to cut in a straight line and then I'm going to take this length that I have Trimmed and I'm going to cut it in half in a slight diagonal.

I would say maybe I'm at a 20° angle which will reveal these cut sides and now these pieces will become the branches that I'm going to Take the remaining large section of gulock, put it on my plate, then I'll take one of my pieces and I'm going to put it to the side, like it's a branch that comes off, so I like to stick one side there and I'm going to use the icing to make it all here, now this will smooth it out a little bit to round it a little bit, it'll look better, it's okay and this will go on top, so let's say.

Here you already know what I want to do it the other way around. I changed my mind this way that spiral is not so pretty never mind putting it back so now it's time to decorate with my buttercream which will be a better angle for you and me. I'm going to leave this Edge uncut so I can trim it later. I like to use a smalloffset spatula to create a crust-like texture, which in this buttercream is very easy to do because it's very smooth and holds its shape very well if you do it. I feel like it's not really sticking, like you could put a small portion underneath and use that to stick it on, so I'm going to give everything a quick coat first to cover everything with the way I am.

I'm definitely going to have extra buttercream. I made a full recipe because if you make less, there really aren't enough eggs in the bottom of the mixer for that first stage of whipping, but this freezes very, very well, so you can definitely freeze leftovers. any tips to make sure you don't cover the edge with the swirls oh, I mean if you put a little bit of buttercream on that cut face, the cut face is very important because it's supposed to look like that, not really, but like this is. It's supposed to look like tree rings, you can just clean it up or not worry about it and then just give it another little cut like a little hairline at the end, trim it an eighth of an inch to reveal a new SI cut. you sacrifice a little but then you can taste it.

I think in general, the less you touch it, the better it looks. I want to trim this side here that hasn't been trimmed and this will just help me get a nice clean cut with a serrated knife I can't believe how late it is, we're setting a new record. I'm going to grate some chocolate on top, which I think will be super pretty, you just have a little bit of fev, my mushrooms are too. ready to come out of the oven I'm going to grab those I know they're ready because when I try to peel one of the mushroom caps it comes out clean so I'm going to grab my mushrooms you can do this with melted. chocolate I'm just feeling a little lazy and don't want to melt the excess chocolate, apply some buttercream to the back of the lid, then choose a stem of the appropriate size, it's the cutest thing I've ever seen and then place it as desired, okay, I want to do one of the stained ones so that the mer are not totally dry, they are a little especially the tops are a little soft in the center, which is great because I can use as the pointy top of the stem so that it goes through the bottom.

I think mushrooms look best in clusters, this one is actually a bit more done up so if you need it you can use it as a little toothpick or something to poke into the bottom. That's going to be fine. I'm going to assemble some more mushrooms. Let this be the way I want. I don't want to go too far with the mushrooms, although I have plenty here to work with. I can always. save them but it looks great it's definitely a little monochrome but I like it it's that good what do you think I should have done one more right there?

What does the back look like? It's pretty simple but I don't want to do too much. where is the sun? I don't know, it's rotting, it doesn't have sun, it really sticks, just pressing it well, I think I'm done, but it's snowing outside. I ate one of the caps like it was a mering, sure they're probably a little? marshmallow inside just sugar the final touch is a little powdered sugar so it's like there is a light snowfall and the little snowdrops called flakes the little snowflakes have found their way into the cracks of the crust so I have some powdered sugar here.

I don't know if this strainer is going to work, let's see. I've used every strainer along with every tool in my kitchen 17 times today, so this is what I'm currently working with, it's like a little psychedelic gift. Don't you think it's time to cut this? It's important that you serve it at room temperature just because the buttercream if it's cold is going to harden and you want to try it at room temperature, where it's super silky and delicious, the rest is pretty. stable basically to cut it is like starting at the branches and then you can just cut the trunk.

I would say this being three 10 probably a sponge looks good. Get some sort of interior piece. Coffee and chocolate are a good combination. I'm not like me. It's the kind of

person

who eats the frosting off the cake, but this is the kind of buttercream I need a little bit of buttercream on every piece. I think they're really fun to make, it's also the kind of thing that, like it's a little messy and sloppy, that's the point, so have fun, try mering mushrooms, you can customize it to whatever kind of flavor you want, no it has to be chocolate so it's really fun and I really want to thank our partner Cary Gold for sponsoring this episode, happy holidays and don't forget to like and subscribe.