Yule Log Cake

A very traditional, very pretty and very easy Christmas dessert. The Yule Log - a light and airy chocolate sponge with chocolate buttercream presented in a festive log shape.

These little reindeer are the essence of Christmas. Think about it/

One of the most satisfying thing to bake is something that is really easy but comes out looking quite complicated and impresses everyone very much. You get to sit back and say, "oh no, it really was very easy" but no one believes you and you look like a flipping baking juggernaut. This Yule Log is one of those things.

Like all good things, this cake has it origins in France with popularity in most French colonies such as French Canada and Belgium, and it's French name is bûche de Noël. If my French tutor ever comes back from wherever she went, maybe I'll be able to correctly pronounce that one day. Why would she leave me at Christmas time? It's like she went out to get some des clopes and never came back.

Here's a few process photos of the stages of the cake mix.

Anyway, the cake! It's a dream. Besides the separating of the eggs, it's all very straight forward. It's a simple thin sponge cake, a Swiss roll, if you will and you will have to if you want to make this so lets not get caught up in semantics. The sticking point is the roll component of the Swiss roll, since you've already got the Swiss part down. I saw you running nude from the sauna to the plunge pool so I know you do. Exhilarating.

They see me rollin'

A cake full of promise.

Taking form now...

Annndddd taaaaa...

But don't let the rolling intimidate you. I rolled it and I can't roll a thing to save me, not even des clopes. And any cracks that do appear in your roll, can be covered by luscious, forgiving buttercream.

...DA!

Bake this deceptively easy cake and let is be the centrepiece of your Christmas table. Unless you're eating outside in Australia, where it is literately hotter than the devils asshole, in which case you might want to leave it somewhere cool until the big reveal. God this country is so hot.

A peaceful snowy landscape.

Sometimes I look forward to the nuclear winter that President Trump is sure to bring upon us all...anyway, MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

hey there little fella.

Yule Log Cake

Prep time: 20 mins, not including cooling time
Cooking time: 20 mins

Total time:  40 mins

Servings: 12 slices

Chocolate Sponge
6 eggs, separated
150 grams caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup grams cocoa powder
Icing sugar to sieve over cake

Chocolate Buttercream

200g chocolate melts

250g icing sugar

250g butter, softened

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk egg whites til thick and stiffened. Once egg whites have reached firm peak stage, sprinkle in 50g of the caster sugar and whisk until just combined.
3. In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks, vanilla and the remaining caster sugar until the yolks change colour and become pale and thick. Sieve the cocoa powder over, then gently fold in.
4. Add a large spoonful of egg whites into the yolk mix and fold. Add the remaining egg whites and fold through. Folding them in carefully to keep the air in the mix.
5. Line a Swiss roll tin with baking paper with a few inches over hanging at the ends. Pour in the cake mixture and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Let the cake cool a little before turning it out onto another piece of baking paper. Cover loosely with a clean tea towel.
6. In the meantime, melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30 second intervals and allow to cool. Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl and add butter and vanilla. Beat until butter is paler in colour then add cooled chocolate and beat until smooth and combined.
7. Trim the edges of the Swiss roll then spread ½ cup to 1 cup of buttercream on to the cake and spread in a thin layer, ensuring the buttercream is spread right to the edges.  
8. Start rolling from the short side facing you, taking care to get a tight roll from the beginning, and roll up to the other side. Use the tension of the baking paper to press the roll, avoiding pressing your fingers in to the cake and leaving indents.
9. Cut both ends at an angle, reserving the remnants, and place the Swiss roll on a board or long dish. Fashion the cut offs to make branches sticking off the main log. You may have to unroll and re-roll to the look right.
10. Spread the remaining buttercream over the cake and use a skewer or fork tines to make indents in the buttercream, to look like bark.   
11. Finally, dust the whole cake with a generous amount of icing sugar ‘snow’.

Mothers Day Pound Cake

Warm and comforting, this is a dense and moist cake that is easy to make and even easier to eat - whip one up to impress your mum with your baking skills or just make one to have with ice cream all for yourself!

Perhaps it is my Alabamian ancestry - my mother moved from Alabama to Australia when she was a teen - but every now and then, I get a hankering for some real down-home Southern cooking. Sometimes I'll need to brew up some iced tea (the stuff you get in the plastic bottles is NOT iced tea), other times the air will be aromatic with spices of proper buttermilk fried chicken but today, it was pound cake.

Traditionally, a pound cake was made with a pound each of four ingredients: Butter, sugar, flour and eggs in a ratio of 1:1:1:1. Four pounds of ingredients is 1.8 kilos...that's a big cake! And this version doesn't shy away from those epic proportions.

The eggs must be beaten well after each addition as there is no rising agents in the recipe. The air whipped in to the cake act as a natural leavening. So make sure the butter is whipped til the butter turns a lighter shade of yellow and each eggs is beaten in well before the next is added.

This cake is a dream to make, it's so easy! It's perfect for those of us who want to whip up a cake for their mum. This cake looks great with a generous sprinkle of icing sugar or a simple glaze. I actually can not tell you which version I like better, with icing sugar or glaze. I think the simplicity of the icing sugar is appealing and of course, so easy but I also like the look of glaze dripping through the channels created by a bundt tin. Either option MUST be served with ice cream though - not negotiable.

Oh and that's the other thing I love about this cake. Cracking out the old bundt tin! I love a cake that can be made ornate and decorated by the shape of the pan! My tin is pretty boring, I should upgrade it.

Not least influenced by the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the bundt also allows for a little creativity with decorations. Some pretty flowers in the centre certainly adds to the prettiness that is Mothers Day.  

At any rate, this is the perfect mothers day cake. And as a bonus, if you have a standard sized cake, there is going to be a touch of batter left over which can be made in to cupcakes! A cake for mum and a treat for you too!

Mothers Day Pound Cake
Adapted from The Complete Southern Cookbook recipe

Prep time: 15 mins

Cooking time: 1 hr 30 mins

Total time:  1 hr 45 mins

Servings: 12 servings

Vanilla Pound Cake

450g butter, softened

3 cups caster sugar

6 eggs, free range

4 cups plain flour, sifted

3/4 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Lemon Glaze - Optional

1 1/2 cups sifted icing sugar

1 tablespoon milk

1 tablespoon melted butter

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 150°C
2. Generously grease a bundt tin and dust with flour.
3. Place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat on medium speed for 5 minutes, or until butter has turned pale.
4. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add sugar.
5. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition with the mixer on medium speed.
6. Add the flour alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour.
7. Add vanilla and mix until combined.
8. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, until the mix reaches half an inch or so from the top.
9. Bake for 1 hour and 30 mins or until the cake is golden and a wooden skewer inserted in to the centre of the cake comes out clean.
10. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then turn on to a wire rack to cool.
11. Top with icing sugar or with lemon glaze.
12. To make glaze, place icing sugar, milk and butter in a bowl and whisk vigorously. Add lemon juice and whisk until combined. Drizzle over cooled cake as desired.
13. Serve with ice cream.

Sky High Mud Cake with Party Pink Icing

Four layers of dense and fudgy chocolate mud cake, covered in sweet Swiss Meringue Buttercream and topped with luscious, rich chocolate ganache drips and outlandish decorations. 

Happy birthday! Party time!

I've always loved birthdays and never understood why people didn't. What's not to love? Everyone wishes you well, people give you presents,  calories agree not to count as their present to you and...there's cake. Any day that you get to have cake is a good day.

Those Smarties didn't find their way on to the cake...but they did find their way into my tummy.

And, in part, my love of birthdays comes from my mum. The other parts of my love for comes from cake and presents, but a big chunk is from mum. My mum likes birthdays and Christmas because she's awesome. And what does an awesome mum need on her birthday? An awesome big pink cake, just for her!

Lush cake mix.

We have a go-to chocolate cake for birthdays in our family, but once in a while it's time to do something different. So I decided to make a mud cake. I wanted to make it stacked to the sky so the firmness of a mud cake was well suited.

I could happily drown in this.

I decided to use Swiss Meringue Buttercream to get the cleanest line possible on the side of the cake. I coloured it bright pink because it looks awesome. This cake is all about awesome. Because my mum is awesome.

This marbled chocolate is so easy and looks so cool.

I'll stop using the word 'awesome' now.

I definitely poured too much chocolate on top, trying to take photos.

But, this cake is OTT. Inspired in no small way by the cake legend Katherine Sabbath, I decorated the top with bits of broken meringue, silver and pink cachous, dripping chocolate ganache and marbled chocolate shards.

Ta-da!

Oh, and French macarons!

A spacescape of sweets.

I think it's a spectacular looking treat, however it couldn't be easier! Mud cake doesn't require any creaming of sugar and butter, it's dense and fudgy quality comes from melting the butter and chocolate together in a pan (with a few other ingredients), then beating in some eggs and the flour. This recipe also has sour cream in it which makes it especially moist.

Cool card, huh.

You know, why do people hate the word moist so much? I'm so tired of hearing how gross it is. It's just a word! Annnyyywwwaaaayyy...

Drippy and awesome. Oh shit, I said awesome again.

Once the cakes have been baked, trim the excess and then halve each layer to create 4 even sized cakes. For this cake and the OTT styling, I decided to use a Swiss Meringue Buttercream. The consistency of SMB is smooth and great for tall cakes.

More is more.

Then it was about the toppings. I decided to buy some macarons and store bought meringue kisses along with some coloured cachous. I marbled some dark chocolate with some white chocolate that I coloured using oil-based colouring and cut shards to place atop the cake.

Those are water balloons blown up. So cute.

And then, get creative. The great thing about this look is that imperfect and asymmetric decorations actually add to the look. Have a bit of fun and remember more is more!

Birthdays are THE BEST!

Sky High Mud Cake with Party Pink Icing
Cake adapted from Bakers Corner
For clear instructions on making Swiss Meringue Buttercream, I always recommend Sweetapolita's fantastic post

Prep time: 30 mins

Cooking time: 90 mins

Total time:  2 hrs 

Servings: 12 very large servings

Chocolate Mud Cake

400g dark chocolate, chopped

400g butter, chopped

2 ½ cups (550g) brown sugar

1 cup (250mL) hot water

2 teaspoons instant coffee

1 cup (100g) cocoa

6 eggs, lightly beaten

300g sour cream

3 cups (450g) plain flour

1 cup (150g) self-raising flour

Chocolate Ganache
300g dark chocolate

350ml heavy cream

Swiss Meringue Buttercream
7 large (225g) egg whites, free range 
1 ½ cups (375g) caster sugar
2 ½ cups (510g) butter, cut into 2cm cubes - should be cool, not cold. Take butter out of fridge 10 -15 minutes before required.
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Pink gel food colouring

Marbled Chocolate
300g dark chocolate

150g white chocolatePink oil-based food colouring

Various toppings eg macarons, coloured jimmies, cachous, sprinkles, smarties

Chocolate Mud Cake

1. Preheat oven to 140ºC.
2. Grease and line two 20cm/8 inch round cake pans.
3. Add dark chocolate, butter, sugar, water, instant coffee and cocoa in a large saucepan over low heat. Stir until mixture is smooth and chocolate has melted.
4. Cool 10 minutes then transfer mixture to a large bowl.
5. Meanwhile, combine eggs and sour cream in a separate bowl then add to the cooled chocolate mixture and stir to combine
6. Sift both flours into the chocolate mixture then stir to combine.
7. Divide mixture evenly among prepared pans.
8. Bake cakes on same shelf in preheated over for 90 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of cake comes out mostly clean - there may be a little moist cake mixture on theskewer, this is normal for mud cake – do not overcook.
9. Stand cakes in pans 15 minutes to cool slightly, before transferring the cakes to wire racks to cool completely.
10. Use a serrated knife to trim and split each cake in half.

Dark Chocolate Ganache

1. Melt the chocolate in a large microwave proof bowl in the microwave in 30 second intervals.
2. Once melted, add cream and stir to combine until smooth.
3. Allow to cool slightly. Ganache should be pourable but not hot.
4. Set aside until required.

Swiss Meringue Butter Cream

1. Wipe out the metal bowl of stand mixer with a paper towel moistened with lemon juice to ensure the bowl is grease free.
2. Add egg whites and sugar, and simmer over a pot of rapidly simmering water, whisking gently until temperature reaches 60°C or until sugar is dissolved.
3. Take the bowl off the heat and put onto stand mixer. Whip on a medium speed until the egg whites have cooled to room temperature. This will take 8 - 10 minutes, or more. Do not add butter until bowl is neutral to the touch.
4. Switch over to paddle attachment and with mixer on low speed add butter cubes one by one in 30 second intervals until all butter has been added. 
5. If the mixture becomes lumpy and looks like scrambled eggs, do not panic. Keep mixing on a low speed and the mix will come together and become smooth. 
6. Add vanilla and a small amount of pink food colouring to reach desired base shade.
7. Set aside until required.

Marbled Chocolate

1. Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
2. Melt white and dark chocolate in small, microwave proof bowls, 30 seconds at a time for each bowl.
3. Once chocolate is smooth, add colouring to white chocolate til desired colour is achieved.
4. Pour dark chocolate over prepared sheet, then add now pink chocolate in random places on top of the dark chocolate, then drag a metal skewer through the chocolates to create a marble effect.
5. Sprinkle crushed meringues and cachous over chocolate.
6. Once chocolate has cooled, cut into shards with a sharp knife.

Assembly

1. Place one of the layers on a cake board, using a dab of Swiss meringue buttercream to adhere the cake to the board.
2. Spread approximately 1 cup of SMB on top of the cake and smooth the icing til even and smooth then place second layer of cake on top.
3. Repeat til all cakes are layered
4. Add approximately 1 cup of SMB on top and spread until the entire cake is covered in a thin layer of SMB; the crumb coat.
5. Place in the fridge for 30 minutes.
6. Remove cake from fridge and add a thicker layer of icing and smooth using cake scrapers and offset spatulas. Continue adding layers of icing to cake til SMB is very smooth.
7. Slowly pour ganache on top of cake; using a small offset spatula, tease the ganache into long drips over the sides of the cake til desired look is achieved.
8. Decorate top of cake with macarons, marbled chocolate, crushed meringues and sprinkles.

Cake Roundup

Would you believe I still have Christmas posts to do? I do. How terrible of me. I will post them soon and everyone will forgive me because I'm lazy and the posts are awesome. In the meantime, I thought I would slap together a quick cake round up. Here are some of the cakes from the last year or so that I have made. Some of these have been on the blog, some are yet to be posted because of my aforementioned laziness and some are wedding cakes that you may have seen on my Instagram account. So here is my cake round up!

Ahh cheesecake. My Caramel Easter Egg Cheesecake. I thought about whether or not to include this, since it's not a cake-cake but it is so damn good, it would be a crime not to include it. I've made this cake with non-Easter Caramello chocolate and it worked out amazingly. It's interesting to see the quality of the photo too, taken on my iPhone. I might revisit this recipe and take photos with my lovely new Canon 700D. And then I would get to eat another cheesecake!

Oh Eggnog Cake, Oh Eggnog Cake, how pretty is your fondant wreath! This was a great cake with a wonderfully spiced flavour. The decoration was so easy and looked amazing.

This cake was epic. The Chocolate Fudge Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream, Salted Caramel and Dark Chocolate Ganache. Such a descriptive title. Says it all. Literally. I shifted this cake slightly after I poured the ganache and the drips got messed up. Also was the first time I tried moody photography, didn't quite work on an iPhone. The cake sure tasted good though. Sugar. Coma.

This is a photo of a wedding cake that I did for a ceremony on the Tweed Coast. There were flowers that were yet to go on the cake but I wanted to get a photo of the cake before it went down. The gold was edible fine glitter dust and vodka painted on. I wish I had a photo of it with the flowers on, it would have been amazing!

The bubbles cake! The Pink Bubble Strawberry Butter Cake. I made this cake to test out making an ombre cake and also to test out my new camera! Aww this cake will always have a special place in my heart now. A Cassie Cakes turning point.

Here is a teaser for an upcoming post. A Pink OTT Mud Cake I made for my mums birthday, inspired by all the Instagram stars around at the moment.

This pretty layer cake was made for my Grandmothers 90th birthday. I love the light in these photos and can't wait to share the rest of them with you!

Finally, this is a wedding cake I made for a fantastic New Years Eve wedding, officiated by the most talented celebrant, Annie from Celebrant Lady Love. 

This post is like a clip show, which I hate but I should have a post up this week. A Christmas post, cos why should Christmas finish in December? I'll tell you why, cos that's the rule. Laziness trumps rules though.  

Do you need a cake for a special occasion? Get in contact with Cassie Cakes via cassiecakes@live.com.au or Facebook to discuss.