Cakes-- Part 2

merry christmas! i made a buche de noel. it is a rolled up cake with chestnut buttercream and cranberry compote, then iced in chocolate buttercream.

it's delicious, even in september.


it has meringue mushrooms.


and a happy snowman.


i went a little mushroom crazy because i think they are so cute. and my snowy leaves broke, but i stuck them on anyway.


and, yes, i did walk around soho with a yule log in a see-through cake box on an 85 degree day in september. and, yes, a little boy did point at it and say, "what IS that thing??" and he really embarrassed his people even though i said, "it's ok. it's a cake. do you want to see it?" and i wanted to give him the yule log, but you can't really go around offering cake to small children. and then the stumps fell off the cake because yule logs weren't really meant to be hauled around soho on 85 degree days in september.



Fraisier

you know this is a fraisier because it says fraisier.


the top is green marzipan. the strawberries are marzipan. the writing is royal icing.

there are strawberries around the bottom, then a couple of layers of american milk sponge. it is full of creme mousseline, which is pastry cream and a lot of butter.



unfortunately, i made a mistake and made the wrong recipe of pastry cream, so there is half as much pastry cream as there is supposed to be. and that translates to twice as much butter as there is supposed to be.