Daring Bakers: French Yule Log

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il enFaut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen the French Yule Log by Flore from Floriege Gourmand.

This one is sure to break any New Year's Resolution. It contains lots of chocolate and almost 2 cups of whipping cream. I won't tell the taster's at tonight's New Year's Eve party. I'm excited to try the end result and even to see the inside, especially since I occasionally felt like I was baking without a net -- the recipe just left me with questions at times, and a big runny slurry for the supposed chocolate mousse.

Like most, I'll start my diet tomorrow...

TWD: Black and White Cheesecake

When it's Christmas dinner for 4, you know that one dessert will cover an entire week of special and not-so-special feasts. As cheesecakes go, this one was pretty darn good, especially with the lower levels of guilt provided by subbing reduced fat cream cheese and sour cream for the full flavored versions.

With only the 4 of us, though, half of the cheese cake is in the freezer for a later occasion. Dorie didn't mention this technique, so we'll see if it tastes better or worse than frozen wedding cake.

This chosen by Anne of Annestrawberry. Thanks for picking a winner

TWD: Buttery Jam Cookies

In 5th grade, we had our first experience with science fair. (I added yeast to bottles of apple juice, trying to determine if the amount of yeast impacted fermenting time and CO2 output. GEEK!) My classmates projects were a bit more "normal" -- along the lines of "which detergent produces the most suds?". I distinctly recall participating in Kelly's experiment, which tracked food color preferences. Using dyed cream-cheese and crackers, she learned that people generally don't care for purple food.

Do you know what? People still don't care for purple food, even in cookies. Even if it is purply-pink food, and the proposed eater is a 4 year old who LOVES all things purple and pink. I made these cookies, chosen by Heather of Randomosity and the Girl with raspberry jam, and some minced crystallized ginger.

I'm feeling a bit love-lost on the cookies. Just two weeks ago, I had the ugly-but-loveable sugar cookies, and I've followed them up with the ugly-and-can't-get-anyone-to-eat-them-if-there-is-homemade-fudge-in-the-house cookies. Ugly cookies are ok when they're filled with chunks (like those granola ones), but here, not so much.

TWD: Butterscotch Pudding

Smooth, cold, creamy pudding. This butterscotch pudding is so different from any other butterscotch I've had. Must be the combination of butter, and scotch. Oddly enough, there wasn't a bottle of single malt in the cabinet, so I substituted some Irish Whisky. Bushmills-butter pudding. While I was feeling all United Kingdom-y, I skipped the topping of pecans and sliced a Lion Bar for the top. I did not, however, wear a kilt. (Sorry Beegee.)

What Christmas List?

I spent the afternoon wrapping Christmas gifts. All manner of toys requested by my children and purchased by their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Yet, as I write this, there are 4 kids in the house (each child has a friend over) and between the 4 they are playing with 10 chairs, a sofa, two blankets, a bunch of yarn, and some scrap paper that's being turned into paper airplanes.

Who needs toys?

TWD: Grandma's Sugar Cookies

In 1999, when I was pregnant with J., I craved sugar cookies. Turns out, the ones I craved the most were sold at work and tasted remarkably similar to these cookies. Almost every afternoon, for weeks on end, I treated myself to a sugar cookie. Fortunately, I still enjoy sugar cookies, which is more than I can say for the other food I craved in that pregnancy -- Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Aesthetically though, I tried the slice and bake version. My cookies looked quite forlorn and tube-like, even with Christmas sugar sprinkled on top before baking. Oh, well.

Note to Self

When doing the laundry of nine-year old boys, it isn't necessary to check all of the pockets. The markers are washable, and it is a well-established fact that candy and string cheese wrappers weather the washer and dryer in near perfect condition. Paperback books, on the other hand, don't do so well in the washing machine. It seems that J. had been doing quite a bit of bathroom reading and decided to hide a book about the World Series in the hamper. The soaked book is now in the garbage, with the exception of several bits of cover, which have adhered themselves to the washer tub.

Fortunately, the book came from our collection, not the library's.

R2R: Squash Soup

There it is -- winter in a bowl. When the weather turns cold (or just cool, really), I will eat pretty much any oven roasted veggie around.

My squash soup stayed pretty close to the original recipe from Top Chef, although I halved the recipe and still had well more than four servings. When it came time to season the soup, I added a substantial about of Hot Curry Powder (from Penzey's spices) and some salt, to cut the sweetness a bit.

Since I was trying to pass this soup off as dinner, and a special one at that, for my kids, I drew upon a recipe that I intended to make earlier in the year for a dinner party that fell through. I found a recipe for Roasted Squash Soup with Saffron Vanilla Ice Cream in The New Spanish Table. So I broke out a pint of vanilla Haagen-Daaz and set a small scoop on the top of each serving. I liked the soup better without the vanilla flavor. My kids, they preferred the soup without the squash flavor.

This month's challenge was hosted by Meg of Joy Through Cooking. Check the Recipes to Rival Blogroll for other tasty versions of this soup.