Tag: yule log

Seasonal Treats

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I LOVE a seasonal treat.

There’s something special about making a treat or meal that is tied to a time of year. Peanut butter eggs taste better than peanut butter cups. Pumpkin pie is a key November staple. Peppermint ALL DAY in December, right? These times are special.

I love walking down Target’s seasonal section looking for baking ingredients or serving vessels/bags. When I was scrolling through my Instagram Grid recently I noticed that the Easter vibe was SO present. It made me wonder if other holidays were the same.

They were!

Let’s take a tour of some of the more recent holiday/seasonal times with a look at “the ‘gram,” AKA what my Instragram grid looked like at these time periods.

This is basically a guided tour of The Louvre… but food pics. You’re welcome.

Fall/Thanksgiving

This time was full of pumpkin. Somehow I did not do many Halloween treats. I realized after some investigation that this was because I was having pretty bad depression in October. When my mood stabilized in November (thanks Zoloft!), I hit Turkey Day running.

I made my first pie crust from scratch. It was wicked good, but my pie plate was a little too large so the crust was not substantial.

I am not sure why that recipe was a liar, but I took it personally… just like MJ in basically every 5 minutes of The Last Dance (Bad Boys 4 Life). To redeem myself, I doubled the recipe next time to make a Buttermilk Pie for my Bobcat BFF Jess.

Christmas Time

During Christmas I was hyper-focused on mailable treats. But I also made a Yule Log cake for me and Jon. He is not a “cake person,” but loves a Red Velvet with Cream Cheese frosting. I make holiday cakes in that flavor combo so I am not eating cake alone. This theme will pop up again for Easter.

The pic on the bottom left was the first Panettone we’d ever eaten. I turned it into french toast because of course I did. I also made round foods, pork, and rice for the new year because, as Michael Scott once said “I’m not superstitious, but I’m a little stitious.”

Valentine’s Day

This is easily my favorite baking holiday. I truly do not care about Valentine’s Day (or Sweetest Day for that matter). But I love pink and hearts and sparkles and THIS HOLIDAY HAS EVERYTHING.

I’ve always loved the classic foil heart-shaped box of chocolates, so I made several treats you could create to fill the box. I also recommend eating the chocolates as you make the new stuff because you deserve chocolates, too! The waffle on the top left was for Galentine’s Day, a Leslie Knope tradition.

Easter/Spring

This is the most recent holiday I baked and make delish foods for. I made cake popcicles for the first time (which Jon dubbed “the personal pan pizza of cakes”). This was made using the red velvet/cream cheese frosting combo so he would share with me. I was going to make carrot cake ones, but he said he didn’t like carrot cake (narrator: but he did).

I have realized while planning this post that there aren’t a lot of good food holidays coming up. Basically the next good one (in my opinion) is Halloween. So what can I celebrate until then?

  • Pretzel Day (yes, office fans that’s on April 26th)
  • Apple Pie Day (May 13th)
  • Donut Day (June 4th)
  • Ice Cream Day (June 7th)
  • Eat Your Vegetables Day (June 17th)
  • Strawberry Sundae Day (July 7th)
  • French Fry Day (July 13th)
  • Milk Chocolate Day (July 28th)
  • Chocolate Chip Cookie Day (August 4th)
  • Potato Day (August 19th… and every other day imo)
  • Waffle Day (August 24th)
  • Cheeseburger Day (September 18th)
  • Queso Day (September 20th)
  • Ice Cream Cone Day (September 22nd)
  • Coffee Day (September 29th)
  • Cinnamon Roll Day (October 4th)
  • Pierogi Day (October 8th)
  • Cake Decorating Day (October 10th)
  • Day of the Nacho (October 21st)

These “national holidays” were found on the internet. For all I know someone threw darts at a dartboard then made the site, but damned if I won’t celebrate NATIONAL POTATO DAY.

Which one would you celebrate?

XO,

Yule Logs are Not Easy to Roll. Or Decorate. Or Take Pictures of, TBH…

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I REALLY wanted to make a Buche de Noel for Christmas this year. We did not travel anywhere and it seemed like the perfect time to create a dessert with a stupid amount of steps and processes. I am going to share the broad strokes with you here! There’s a full video if you want to watch this go down- including me rolling the video and seeing my cake crack… thrice.

First, I wanted to make meringue mushrooms for this adorbs cake. I did… and were they the most adorable things I’ve created, then eaten? Yes.

Will I make them to top any dessert I create when we eventually entertain again? Also yes. SO. CUTE.

Next, I made the roll cake. My husband is not a huge cake person. He isn’t even a small cake person. He’s a human person who doesn’t love cake. So I asked him to choose the cake/icing flavors hoping this would entice him to eat a slice or two (it did!) He opted for red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting (in the same recipe link).

I thought about making a chocolate buttercream or chocolate cream cheese frosting for the cake, but my man is a PURIST and would be super sad there was another flavor sneaking into his VIP party in Flavortown. So I just made the cream cheese frosting brown with food coloring. Problem solved!

I also chopped off the roll on the front piece pictured below (have no fear- we ate it). It was not the blunt shape of the other ends and I wanted continuity. Next time I’ll attach it on that side, to not need this step (This is a lie- I will do the same thing so I can eat cake sooner).

I also wanted to cover the roll cake with rolled pieces of chocolate so it looked like real bark. This became an EXCELLENT idea because my roll cake had one three cracks in it when I rolled it up. I glued the cake back together with the brown colored cream cheese frosting, then covered it with the chocolate bark.

The last few steps were putting ground pistachios around as moss and placing the mushrooms (once again using brown cream cheese frosting as glue). The green sticks are matcha pocky. So cute, no?

The last step? Making my husband take pictures of me as I added powdered sugar snow:

Awe.

We ate most of this and I froze two slices for a rainy day. You can watch a video of the whole process here.

XO,