Even though the weather can sometimes be cold and damp, I can't help feeling warm and fuzzy inside when I hear cheery Christmas songs. I love the month also because of all the activities and excitement happening in my kitchen.
The Christmas season is the season to be generous and my dad had always make sure that our Christmases are sweet with log cakes, fruit cakes (despite the mockery some make of fruit cakes, I love my dad's fruit cakes. They are generously studded, loaded with rum-soaked dried fruits and when sliced, they look like a piece of colourful stained glass, with the cherries and raisin and peels... mmmm...) and stollen! Yum!
I can't remember when I started to assume some of the cake baking duties. I made fruit cakes some years ago and though they tasted okay to me, they just lacked that certain je ne sais quoi which my dad's cakes have. I baked stollen another year and let's just say that I will let my dad continue with his stollen baking.
This year, I dragged my dad into the kitchen and we made log cakes together for the first time. I have baked log cakes before by myself but never with the REAL baker himself. The one pictured above is the classic chocolate log cake - chocolate sponge roll with whipped cream and covered generously with dark chocolare ganache (seriously dark as I whipped out my 73% dark chocolate).
It's old-fashioned but just the way I like it - with real solid good ingredients and nothing gimmicky. And it is the act of sharing something sweet that makes it taste even better!
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