One of the best chocolate Yule Log or Buche de Noel cakes for Christmas.

Easy rolled chocolate sponge cake with cream and chocolate decoration.

Soft chocolate almond sponge with rich  Mascarpone vanilla cream and crunchy chocolate on top. Lets start cooking!

Preheat oven to 356 F / 180 C.  Sieve cocoa powder, flour and baking powder in a large bowl. Add sugar and mix with a spoon.

In another bowl whip egg whites until soft peaks.

In the other bowl whip egg yolks until pale yellow.

Add dry ingredients to the whipped egg yolks. Add almond extract and combine with a spatula. Fold egg whites into chocolate batter.

Prepare a tray with baking paper and brush it with melted butter. Add sponge mixture to the tray. Flatten with a spatula. Bake for 12 minutes.

Let the sponge cool until you can touch it, then dust with cocoa powder. Put sponge cake on the clean kitchen towel, dusted with cocoa. Remove baking paper. Wrap it, rolling in the kitchen towel.

Can you imagine a better dessert for Christmas? A slice of Buche de Noel is a perfect ending of your Christmas dinner!

Whip Mascarpone cheese for few minutes and whip heavy cream in separate bowl, using hand mixer.Add 6 drops of stevia and vanilla extract to Mascarpone cheese.

Fold whipped cream in Mascarpone, then whip for 1 minutes, using hand mixer until combined. Unroll the sponge cake and distribute the cream with offset spatula or spoon.

Roll the cake with cream tightly. While doing so be very careful, try not to break the shape of the Yule Log cake!

Moist and delicious French Christmas cake idea! Yule log and Christmas are almost synonyms for more than a century in Europe and it is ver popular in North America. 

Put about 80 % of dark chocolate in  heat-proof bowl. Melt it in the pot with boiling water (Bain Marie)  until almost melted or until thermometer shows 46 C / 115 F. 

Then transfer the bowl to the cool table. Start adding remaining chocolate and mixing with a spatula until it  cools to 31 C / 88 F.

The process may take up to 20 minutes, depending on the temperature of your room. You can see it becomes glossy and thick.

Pour the chocolate on parchment paper, flatten Roll  the parchment paper. Put it between the glasses/bowls, so it will have slightly rounded edges like bark. Leave it to set completely!

Carefully unroll the paper, letting the bark crack in smaller pieces. Cut the ends of the Buche de Noel Cake.  'Glue' the bark to the sponge using extra melted chocolate.

Dust the cake with powdered sugar and decorate with rosemary and cranberries right before serving this delicious cake. 

Dust the cake with powdered sugar and decorate with rosemary and cranberries right before serving this delicious cake. 

A Chocolate Yule Log or ‘Bûche de Noël’ is a popular Christmas dessert. It’s traditionally prepared for Christmas in France.

And in Belgium this dessert is known as  ‘Kerststronk’ in Flemish (Belgian Dutch language). This dessert is also  popular in other French speaking countries, such as Canada and  Switzerland.

Apparently the tradition of burning logs at  the end of December, celebrating the end of winter season was well  known in medieval Europe. 

However with time and introduction to Christianity, the logs became smaller, finally reaching our tables as a baked dessert!