Gluten Free Yule Log (bûche de Noël)

Those of you who have followed my gluten free recipe blog for awhile know that I absolutely love food history. Which of course is why I’m excited to be bringing you this recipe for a gluten free Yule Log Cake, or bûche de Noël.

Most of us have seen a Yule Log, some of us have tasted one, few of us have made one and even fewer of us have tasted (or made!) a gluten free bûche de Noël. This iconic, rolled, chocolate buttercream filled sponge cake is quite unusual in that it is made to look like a felled tree and adorned with edibles like meringue mushrooms.

It’s such a unique cake, to be made in the shape of a log, isn’t it? Who would devise such an odd design?

Of course there’s a story, and like much in history, a good portion of it is speculation, but it’s pretty interesting, nonetheless.

The original custom of celebrating with yule logs dates back to the Iron Age in Europe and involved actual logs — the kind made of wood, not cakes made to look like wood. Celtic Brits and Gaelic Europeans gathered at the winter solstice, feasting and celebrating the days becoming longer and the coming of spring. To “cleanse the air” of the year’s events, logs anointed with wine and salt and decorated with greenery were burned. 

Yule logs were burned continuously for the twelve days at the end of December (by pagans to persuade the sun to move again, then later by Christians, for the twelve days of Christmas), and depending on where you lived, different types of wood were selected.

Somewhere in the early 1600s what we know of as the edible Yule Log cake made an appearance around the Christian holiday of Christmas. Speculation is that smaller hearths contributed to making the pagan log burning passé, while baking a yule log shaped cake was much more practical, and I daresay, delicious. 

Meringue and marzipan decorations on a sponge cake became what we now recognize as the Yule Log of modern times, having been popularized largely by Parisian bakeries in the 1800s. This gluten free Yule Log or bûche de Noël is just its newest delicious incarnation! 

To make this gluten free Yule Log or bûche de Noël, the steps are the same as making one with wheat. Luckily, my award-winning gfJules Flour mimics the same properties of high quality all purpose wheat flour so you can pull off recipes like this one with out worry of it falling apart or crumbling, and with no grit or funky aftertaste.

It makes baking easy and fun, so you can dive into baking traditions like a Yule Log knowing you’ll enjoy sweet success!

Pastry chef R. Mora developed this recipe using my gfJules Flour, and shared after making the cake,

“One of my favorite things about working with gfJules GF All Purpose Flour is that there is no grittiness or strong aftertaste in the final baked goods. Making the recipe with this flour blend was very easy and there was no need to take extra steps to improve the texture or flavor.”

You’ll start out by preparing a 1/2 sheet pan by lining it with parchment paper (a baker’s best friend!) and spread the batter out on the prepared pan. As soon as you remove the baked cake from the oven, immediately invert it onto another piece of parchment dusted with powdered sugar.

Then roll up the cake with the parchment so that the cake cools in the roll shape and holds the “memory” of that shape. Once it’s cooled, you simply unroll it, peel off the parchment paper, apply generous layer of chocolate buttercream frosting, then roll it back up. That’s the shape that the cake will want to take again, so it makes it more natural.

The ends can be trimmed and re-arranged to look like cut branches off of the main log, if you like.

There are directions here to make the mushroom-shaped meringues, as well, but if you’re in a hurry or just want to go with a simple sugared cranberry or rosemary decoration, that’s equally beautiful — or of course, you can do both! Simply rinse the berries or fresh sprigs of herbs in water, then roll in granulated sugar. That’s it. Simply gorgeous.

If you do decide to try your hand at making the Mushroom Meringues, they’re quite simple and really do make an impression! If you don’t have the icing tips, you can improvise by cutting a small corner out of a plastic sandwich bag.

Just like the mushrooms found in nature, they don’t have to be impeccable, and they should all look unique and different, so don’t stress over perfection here!

I hope you enjoy this holiday tradition this year and welcome the longer days ahead by celebrating with this delicious — and historic — gluten free Yule Log Cake.

Don’t overlook how incredibly yummy this gluten free sponge cake with decadent chocolate buttercream is; just because it’s so pretty doesn’t mean you can’t cut into it and enjoy the fruits of your labor!

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