The highlight of Christmas break!
For Christmas dessert, I made a yule log, aka a buche de noel. Mine was pistachio cake rolled around a chocolate mascarpone filling with a fluffy swiss buttercream and meringue mushrooms! Even though my mother and I don't care that much for meringue kisses, we couldn't stop eating the mushrooms - so the extra 4 dozen or so are not an issue! Recipe will soon be up, but in the meantime, here are some photos!
The mushrooms are simple: meringue piped into circles and trunks, connected with chocolate and dusted with cocoa powder.
The cake, rolled up fresh out of the oven.
The log before frosting - this explains the secret of the knot that sticks out!
The finished log! The cocoa-dusted meringue mushrooms, the frosted log with a fork run through it for bark texture, sprinkled with extra ground pistachios for moss and crushed meringue for snow!
