Bûche forêt noire

Une buche. A log of wood.
Dans la Forêt Noire. In the Black Forest.

The biggest night of the day used to be a fireplace gathering. The family was using the biggest chunk of wood possible. They had to light it at the sunset, and it would last till dawn…
The Black Forest are mountains covered with Christmas trees, well silver fir trees, as they were already there long before Christmas was invented.

When I was a kid, we had 3 Christmas feasts to eat : 24th at home, 25th and 26th, both sides of grand-parents… so that made 3 big Christmas desserts. And two Christmas traditions were competing. One was la forêt noire (black forest cake), round, but decorated with plastic Christmas items. The second was la bûche de Noël (Yule log cake). That was hard to make a choice to conclude this :

Xmas menu

Well, it’s a mix of both.

It’s a modified black forest cake. That’s a simple biscuit de Savoie, flavored with cocoa and almond essence. I had not the ideal ingredients. I used cherries in syrup, with a neon color. I soaked them in creme de framboise raspberry liquor. The cake is punched with this alcohol too. The layer of cream is light without sugar as the biscuit is very sweet. Topping is regular chocolate grated.