A cake yule never forget

There’s an alchemy to what goes on in the kitchen; a mystery that is perhaps particularly relevant at this time of year.

Take egg whites.

Transparent and slippery when they slide from a cracked shell; opaque and white, stiff and yet airy after being whipped. Such a transformation.

The day before Christmas Eve, my cold in full flow after having returned with a vengeance, it was time to finally roll up sleeves and get going with the Yule log I’d long promised The Other Half, since he doesn’t like any cake containing dried fruit.

There’s been a vast Swiss roll tin in the cupboard for a couple of years now, but procrastination is an effective shield against new culinary challenges.

So, after having found flu drugs in the medicine cabinet and with Annie Lennox singing carols in the background, I sat down with caffeine and the recipes and notes I'd printed out last week.

First, there was the Nigella version.

“I can’t promise it’s a doddle,” she had written – words that, in my mind’s eye, I could see being delivered to the accompaniment of a certain look to camera, “but it works easily”.

And it certainly looked far from difficult. Indeed, the main question seems to be the rolling bit.

While searching for general advice, I’d come across Felicity Cloake’s recent article in her Guardian ‘how to make the perfect’ series, where she tests a number of recipes and then comes up with a perfect one.

The key here was the rolling question.

Nigella – like Delia – let’s the cake cool before rolling. Research suggested that this was not best, and Cloake's own tests backed this up.

In the event, I used Nigella’s recipe – with a tweak or two. Besides, her amounts were more realistic for the tin I have than any that Cloake used.

You start by separating half a dozen medium eggs, then whisking those whites until they peak, before adding 50g of caster sugar and mixing a little more. Then a teaspoon of vanilla extract goes in, along with 50g of sifted cocoa powder.

In another bowl, the yolks are whisked up with 100g caster sugar, until they’re the texture of a mousse and a lovely, pale yellow.

A couple of “dollops” of the white mix are added and beaten in, before the rest of the egg white mixture is carefully folded in.

Everything goes into your carefully-lined Swiss roll tin and is popped into an oven (160˚C fan) for 20 minutes.

Once removed, it gets a moment or two to rest – and then comes the bit everyone dreads.

Turn it out onto more baking paper and gently roll up, before leaving to cool.

There are mentions of clean tea towels and dustings of icing sugar. I managed thus: a little icing sugar was sprinkled on the sponge, then it was covered with another large sheet of baking paper.

The inverted cooling rack went on top and then it was quite easy to turn over. The tray came away easily and it was only a matter of taking my time to ease the bottom layer of baking paper away.

It doesn’t matter if you tear or lose a bit of cake – you’re going to cover those.

Using the baking paper that’s now beneath your sponge, you slowly roll the thing away from you. The paper is a great help, because you can use that rather than putting pressure on the warm sponge.

Slip the paper out from underneath and leave on the cooling rack.

Later, it was a case of bashing up 175g of 70% cocoa solids chocolate as the sound of Bing Crosby singing that song drifted through the flat, before melting gently over a pan of hot water.

Butter and icing sugar was beaten together, before the melted chocolate joined them, once it had cooled a little.

Now at this juncture, Nigella calls for another teaspoon of vanilla essence to be added to the mix, but I decided to take a leaf out of Cloake’s book experiments.

I split approximately a third of the mixture into another bowl and added a substantial squeeze of chestnut purée, then spread that over the unrolled cake.

By this time, we’d hit Jingle Bells – in French – on The Other Half’s Christmas playlist. And people imagine he’s all ‘bah humbug’ at this time of year.

Once the filled sponge was rolled back up, I cut off a piece from each end and placed them alongside it, at angles, on a silver cake board.

Then it was a question of plastering over the chocolate buttercream mix – with vanilla now added. There was a massive amount of the mixture and it wasn’t quite as easy as you might imagine, because the sponge is really quite delicate.

Next, take a skewer and try to make it look like a log. A line here; a whorl there. I realised that it’s a long time since I drew cartoon logs, but it sort of came back to me.

Then dust with sieved icing sugar and decorate with whatever you’ve got available. I’d managed, only a few days ago, to get my hands on some sugar flowers, a little Christmas tree and a robin, so on they went (the tree on a sugar-dusted ‘hump’ of extra buttercream to one side of the cake itself.

And there it was – my first Yule log. Looking suitably Yuleish. Even by my standards, this is not health food – but it is Christmas, after all!

Then onto the day’s next task – making orange dust and lemon dust. There was to be no repeat of last year’s debacle, when I misread the temperature as centigrade when it was actually fahrenheit.

A small orange and a lemon were sliced as thinly as possible – oh, the value of a new, really, really sharp Zwilling Henckels paring knife – and went on to a lined baking tray, to spend the hours n the oven at 100˚C (fan).

They’re then blitzed (separately), each with a pinch of sugar and a touch of salt, before being sieved into small containers, where they keep very nicely for some time.

And that was entirely enough prep for one day: there’s still Christmas Eve to go, and plenty more to do. But that can wait.

This Christmas, consider the following

This woman is 51.

She is a TV 'health guru' advocating an holistic approach to nutrition and ill health, promoting exercise and a pescetarian diet that is high in organic fruits and vegetables. She recommends detox diets, colonic irrigation and supplements. She also makes statements that yeast is harmful, that the colour of food is nutritionally significant and about the utility of faecal examination.



This woman is 50.

She is a TV cook, who drinks her fair share of wine and eats nothing but meat, cream, butter and desserts.

So take note, then crack open the wine and chocolates!





* And thanks to Steph, who forwarded this to me.

Beginning to relax

It was around 9.30am this morning, after I'd stretched deeply in bed and let my body sink back once more that The Other Half observed: "You're all relaxed now Christmas Day is over."

Well, it's not quite that simple: I felt relaxed last night, after dinner was finished. And then we'd also decided, given that the living is still knee deep in wrapping paper and a box that's large enough for kittens to be able to jump in and out of, not to shut them in that room, with food and litter tray, for the night. Boudicca has been objecting anyway for the last few nights – objecting at least to an internal door being shut.

They did wonderfully well on the first night in their new home where they could ramble around if they so wished. Both came to bed at various points and licked and nuzzled and kneeded us. And Otto slept for a while on my arm. And none of this really seemed to bother her majesty, who is looking more and more relaxed with each passing day.

Christmas Day – well, Christmas morning – wore them out. Boxes and paper are just perfect for kitten fun. After something like three hours of lunacy, they curled up to sleep it all off. It was a joy to watch them.

St Delia of Norwich had been right – lists (and then more lists – do help. This was probably my most organised and, therefore, easy, Christmas Day catering thus far.

I even bothered to do something I haven't done since the last time I spent Christmas with my parents – showered, blow-dried my hair and dressed in tidy fashion, before breakfasting on thin toast and goose foie gras with truffle.

There is an element of truth to The Other Half's observation. Although he'd forgotten that I've also been getting up fairly early this last week to feed kittens. With their way unblocked, if they were really hungry, they could find Boudi's food in the kitchen.

But yes, it's my big cooking event of the year and it might only be for the two of us, but I like to get it right. And whilst obviously I create the meal with more than half an eye to The Other Half's tastes, he's never set me any targets to achieve – I set those for myself.

The menu was, I'm delighted to report, well balanced. The salad of thinly sliced fennel, red onion and orange was made an hour before eating, and because it wasn't leaves, I dressed it then too. The dressing was supposed to be red wine vinegar, virgin oil, Dijon mustard and honey. However, I'd forgotten to pick up any Dijon, so some made Coleman's had to do. And when I'd gone to reach for the red wine vinegar, it was to find a sediment in it. So I substituted with raspberry wine vinegar. No sacrifice there, methinks. Indeed, the dressing proved zingy and fresh – a success, I thought.

Part two of this culinary epic was roast sirloin of beef. I'd started that off with a quartered onion under the meat (thank you, Nigella) and with plain flour patted into the fat on top (Delia again). A bit of a mare to carve, but lovely meat. It was served with a "confit" of whole shallots and garlic cloves, which had been simmered merrily for an hour in red wine and raspberry wine vinegar (again, the emergency substitution did no harm to the taste). That again was Delia – although research in my copy of Larousse this afternoon, while prepping today's sauce, showed me that it was not a confit: that is specifically a way of preserving meat (hence duck confit, which is stored and preserved in duck fat). But that's not to say that it wasn't gorgeous.

I'd done a few roast potatoes and a few sprouts – sautéed and steamed – and we opened a very decent bottle of red wine, having started with a glass of chilled white Banyuls, brought back from Collioure in September, as an apéritif. I'd managed a little gravy for the meat and, all in all, I was pretty satisfied.

And so to the sweet: the pear tarts baked in 17 minutes and were lovely – moist fruit and perfectly crisp pastry. The stem ginger ice cream – my first ever attempt at ice cream, and without an ice cream maker – was, though I say so myself, excellent (thanks again, Delia). The Other Half has already started hinting about making more ice cream – particularly vanilla, his favourite. Somewhere in the back of mind is an idea that more exotic possibilities exist.

We exchanged gifts. It's The Other Half's half century next month, and after seeing a TV documentary on the subject, I'd booked us a March trip on the Orient Express to Venice, where we'll spend five nights. So I'd piled in to Christmas by buying him books about Venice itself and a DVD about the train. There was a new lens for me, plus photography books.

And then it was the pleasure of flopping in front of the TV. Dr Who proved excellent entertainment (my mother never let us watch sci-fi, so this is a recently acquired taste, thanks initially to re-runs on cable) and then the newest Poirot on ITV, with the wonderful David Suchet as the eponymous Belgian detective, and a really rather chubby Tim Curry as an archeologist and peer of the realm. What happened to the Tim who flounced around in basque and stockings, pouting at the camera in The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

It was, as you might have gathered, a most pleasant day.

But yes – now the rather more serious relaxation can begin.