My better half, S., asks me ‘What’s this obsession with bûches de Noël this Christmas?’
The simplest answer is that my family has been also obsessed with bûches de Noël, or at least one bûche de Noël for about 40 years.
But first, if anyone is unfamiliar, a bûche de Noël, or yule log, or Christmas log, is a traditional French or Quebecois Christmas dessert, a sweet roulade with sponge cake named after the original yule log, a big log to be put in the fire during Christmas celebrations.
Our family’s bûche de Noël comes from Notte’s Bon Ton Pastry and Confectionary in Vancouver. The Christmas Log is beautifully decorated with marzipan mushrooms, and flowers and leaves made of butter-cream icing, dusted with chocolate flakes, covering a rolled sponge cake with a dash of alcohol (rum?) and more layers of butter cream inside.
If anything, we’re faithful, we Quans, and once we’d decided this was our special Christmas dessert (not only because we liked the taste, but because it was slightly unusual in anglophone Canada), it was ours… forever. This cake, eaten in Vancouver, or… transported to Hawaii on a regular basis… was also frozen afterwards, if there were leftovers, and I somehow remember eating it well into the spring on occasional years (it was like magic pudding, it seemed to multiply out of sight).
This is the bûche from this year, 2014, transported from Vancouver to Hawaii, and very fetchingly displayed with some Hawaiian foliage (good job, family, on the presentation!). The frog pastries aren’t a part of the log, but we always seem to stick them in, as the green marzipan and red butter cream match the colours quite well. And I suppose frogs would hang out on a log.
Living in Paris for a few months, I hadn’t really considered that this would be an excellent place to try some yule logs… but a month or two ago, my friend Karyn sent me this link to some ridiculously luxurious Parisian yule logs. You see, she lives in NYC, and every time the New York Times writes an article about an amazing new restaurant or bakery in the Big Apple, I implore her to go… so I can eat vicariously. ‘I’ll eat the dumplings in Queens if you eat a gorgeous xmas bûche for me!’ she replied, last time, and the challenge was on.
The next trigger was when we were visiting my favourite macaron store in Paris, Pierre Hermé. Buying their Christmas flavours (foie gras and fig, foie gras and chocolate, and white chocolate and truffle… perhaps a post for another time), the pamphlet they slipped in with our purchase included descriptions of ridiculously delicious-sounding yule logs… like this one. I had, in fact, made up my mind to buy a mandarin log, that served 2-3 people, and was… cough, 50 euros (the one in the photo is 80 euros). But when we went into the store, orders were only online, and while they tried to sign me up with an iPad, something went wrong. 
Instead, I came home, surfed the net, and decided that there many more yule logs to be had, at rather more affordable prices.
But even I was surprised by how many I was able to try. The first one, at the top of the page, was a surprise from S., because ‘I was so obsessed’. It’s from the bakery two minutes from here on Rue de Lombards appropriately named Boulangerie des Lombards. For a humble bakery, this pastry was pretty darn good. Its flavouring and texture reminded me of the one from Bon Ton. It’s cute that they build it on a little cookie base.
The next one was a nice surprise, the dessert for our Christmas Eve dinner at Theatre du Chaillot, after a dance performance by the Batsheva Dance Company. Adorable, no? Mostly chocolate cream, a cute crunchy meringue star, and set on a sweet biscuit.
At Christmas lunch, at the amazing Atelier du Joel Robuchon Etoile, the penultimate course was an individual Buche de Noel, or perhaps I’m just pretending it was. They made it look like Santa’s sleigh, calling it ‘Le Traineau: parfait glacé á l’arielle, crème de marron de l’Ardèche, meringue croustillante’. The meringue cracker was a miracle of engineering, the star was of white chocolate, the splotch of chestnut cream with a flake of real gold flake, and a tiny ice cream log wrapped in red. Gorgeous.
My yule log research uncovered a wonderful discovery. Romain Lievre is a young and talented pastry chef who has opened up a store at 27 rue Saint Jacques on the Left Bank. Their website said they not only did a pretty chocolate yule log, at a reasonable price, but individual logs for 6 euros each. They looked tasty, interesting and a bargain. I was rather surprised then when I went into the store, and found that the individual version of the logs were in fact little santa hats. I thought I was culturally confused, but a fellow came in just after me, asked for the individual logs, looked at the hats and said, ‘that’s not a log,’ and left. I bought them anyways.
What was completely delightful about these is that they look relatively simple, but the insides were a rich chocolate butter cream that seemed to have a sophisticated flavour, and another bit of non-chocolate cream or icing. There was also a small blob of coconut cream in the middle, soft and cold, surprising. S. didn’t like that part but I did. On the whole the Santa hat was rather complex, and completely tasty. I’ll be heading back there to try more of his pastries!
And finally… my favourite Belgian chocolate maker, Pierre Marcolini, also makes a version of a yule log, which seems rather conceptual. It’s more like a little yule 
house. They didn’t have any available on Christmas Eve, so I ordered them for New Year’s Eve, one each in three flavours: vanilla, chocolate and chestnut. I picked them up on the 31st though noticed that for all my plotting and worrying about getting yule logs, bakeries all over Paris had leftover bûches in all sizes in their display cases.
As for our gorgeous yule houses, one couldn’t say that these weren’t rich and creamy, but they were less so than the others, more restrained. The meringue roof concealed flavoured cream, there was another crunchy meringue and then below, another few spheres of creamy goodness and a raspberry or two on top of a meringue base. It was all a very refined combination and almost fooled one into thinking, with the meringue crunch, that it was light.
Five bûches. I think I’ve done my duty. I’m signing off to waddle off down the Seine.
Our special culinary treat for this Parisian adventure was Christmas lunch at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon Etoile, a two-star Michelin restaurant at the top of the Champs-Elysées, a stone’s throw from the Arc de Triomphe. Christmas is a good time to visit, as the restaurant’s dominant colours are a deep red and black with metallic accents, making it look like the workshop of the restaurant’s name could very well be Santa’s. If Santa was a famous French chef with a small empire of restaurants worldwide.
We rode up the Champs-Elysées, which was surprisingly packed on Christmas day: the bustling Christmas market, and particularly the car showrooms, Citroën and Renault! After parking our Vélibs, Paris’s nearly free bikes, we hopped across the street in search of the Drugstore Publicis, which appears to be an ultra-modern shopping villa, with a pharmacy, bistro, wine store, caviar counter and a Ladurée macaron stand. The restaurant’s entrance, surprisingly, was in the middle of all of this, a private staircase leading down to a fairly modest-sized restaurant, an open 
kitchen surrounded by counters, and one small room off to the side, with only six tables. That’s where we sat! There were various choices on the menu, the very expensive á la carte options, and lunch combinations where you could choose your preferred entree, main and dessert, ranging from 3 courses to 6.
The desserts were really delicious… I had île flottantes. I love this dessert. A delicate barely cooked egg white mixture floating in a sea of vanilla cream. But I’ve never had 4 little islands in one dish. S’s matcha crème brulée was not as pretty, but pretty marvelous.
A mini-break in the Champagne region. Hotels were booked up in Eparnay so here we are in Reims. A quick survey of Tripadvisor a few days in advance had most of the top-ranked restaurants booked out. It’s possibly because Tuesday is a holiday, Armistice Day, and people are taking off Monday and doing the ‘pont’ (bridge).
translation: Chicken Butt.
sorbet. Visually appealing, light and not too sweet.
glass. If you’re new to Paris, you must try this interesting restaurant, she’d explained. They prepare the food right in front of you at the counter. The specialty is food that has a sweet or sugary flavour, such as sugary vegetables.
some Gueuze Belgian beer. One of my favourites of the night.
Did I mention how fun it was to see the chefs at work? We’ve sat the counters of Fourteen and Momofuku in Sydney, and really enjoyed the experience and show of seeing chefs at work. But this was much more intimate and boy were they working hard! A main chef and two main assistants, composing each dish at the counter, each labour intensive and complicated. I suppose it was made possible in that everything was that everything had been prepared before service, and little required an oven, and none required a fry pan. I it was great to appreciate the thinking, planning, timing and artistry involved.
Delicious AND they served it with whiskey. Smoky and sweet. They served a second dessert at the same time, a nice touch so we split both dishes between use. The other was served with whiskey as well, a butterscotch concoction which could have been a typically rich sweet dessert but there was such a zing of lemon hidden in this one, it made it quite out of the ordinary. Loved the red plate too.
