The Bûche de Noel
You may have a French Christmas without it, yet not a Very Merry One: The Bûche de Noel. The Bûche de Noel is the traditional French dessert on Christmas Eve. It’s a rolled biscuit cake with creamy filling and shaped like a log, hence its name. It comes in all flavours and versions, modern or nostalgic, fancy or classic, homemade or bought at the patisserie, yet it always, always is a corker.
I have a version with griottes and vanilla in my cookbook and the one pictured is with dark chocolate and extra rum. For this year’s Christmas, which for the sake of moving house will be a rather informal, I will try out a Bûche at the local patisserie in the little town where I’ll do my shopping in the future. It looks perfectly old fashioned, exactly how I like it!
This is Les Poissonchat’s Wondrous Advent Calendar! Advent calendars are a huge tradition where I come from: you make little gifts for your loved ones every day until Christmas Day, fourandtwenty little surprises. The advent calendars come in beautifully old fashioned prints on cardboard, with extra glitter, and each day there’s a paper door waiting for you to pry open. Others are more elaborate, pretty baskets filled with twenty four numbered parcels, decorated with red velvet ribbons. The one I’m making for you this season is altogether a different one, and, quite obviously, it’s about beloved France, Christmas in France, and after all, what it takes to celebrate a proper French Christmas.
Les Poissonchats 