Daring Bakers December - French Yule Log

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

Wow what a challenge! While I was tempted to say I was too busy to even attempt such a complicated recipe I'm very glad I had a go. And really after reading through the recipe a few times and deciding which variation of each component to do, it seemed achievable!

Really this recipe is 6 relatively straightforward recipes in one (or 7 if you count the praline I had to make from scratch for one of the components).

Despite making a huge mess and using practically every pot, pan, spoon, spatula and appliance I own, I only struck a few problems.

Firstly while making the Chocolate Mousse component. The basic technique was to make a sugar and glucose syrup which is heated to the soft ball stage and then to beat this into already whipped egg yolks. My first attempt resulted in this ...

a stringy sticky cobwebby tangle of sugar around the beater which was incredibly hard to remove! Being pregnant I was already concerned about this mix being hot enough to cook the egg yolks and I don't think even a single drop of the sugar mix actually touched the eggs at that point!

So I made 2 extra batches of the sugar syrup, hoping that enough of it would get in to do the job. It certainly thickened up beautifully and became incredibly glossy so I took that as a good sign.

My other main issue was weather related. It was a very hot and humid 33 degrees the day I made this and neither the mousse or ganache actually became firm despite hours in the fridge. In the end I just ladled my soupy mousse over each layer and drizzled in the ganache and it seemed to work.

I also ended up with nowhere near enough icing to cover the log. What I should have done was attempted to spread the icing over the whole log (like a crumb coat) and then made a second batch. But by that stage I was pretty much over it so left it with a relatively festive drizzle which ran down the sides.

The only other issue came with the praline layer. I used my homemade praline with crushed oat flake cereal and ended up with quite a thick slab. This ended up being easy to eat once it was in pieces but none of us had the strength to break it with a spoon in our bowls. 'Scuse fingers!

This was an incredibly impressive dessert which I served at our early Christmas Eve Dinner on the 21st. It was relatively easy to slice after 20 minutes in the fridge and definitely rich enough not to need any extra decoration or accompaniments.

From top to bottom the layers are:

• Milk/Dark Chocolate Icing
• Lemon Daquoise
• Milk Chocolate Mousse
• Vanilla Creme Brulee
• Milk Chocolate Mousse
• Dark Chocolate Ganache
• Praline Crisp
• Milk Chocolate Mousse
• Lemon Daquoise

What a mouthful!

Thank you to Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux for choosing such an exciting and challenging recipe. There is no way I would have attempted this on my own otherwise and their advice in the forum over the past month was invaluable!