Boxing Day today?

I’m pretty sure we don’t have the culture of queuing whee hours early in the morning to rush into the stores and get crazy discounts, aka, Boxing Day Sales. lol So perhaps sleeping is the best, or have an awesome brunch.

How was Christmas celebrations ? Had too much delicious food or it was just like any other day? Haha, talking about that, the Christmas Giveaway is still open, so please do send in more entries to up your chances of winning. So far, I haven’t seen any glazed ham or the traditional turkey yet.

Anyways, yesterday I had BBQ potluck. So much food! Here’s a recap of what we had *oh bummer, forgot to take pics*. Lamb, prawns, chicken wings, sausages, chicken balls, satay, fried bee hoon, pork n chicken ham, red wine, whisky, misc drinks, dragonfruit jelly, marshmallows, and a log cake. Oh, and to add onto the list, does playing Wii Sports with a 6 y/0 kid count? Hahaha Ok honestly, too much food. It’s 3.am now and I’m drafting this post because I can’t sleep just yet.

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I brought in a cake for the party. Because I was a little short handed on time, I decided to make something simple. Plus, not everyone eats over-complicated cakes without asking u a million questions. So this time, I kept it simple with just 2 flavours; pumpkin and chestnut.

Bûche de Noël is a traditional log cake served near or during Christmas. And you know, I’ve always wanted to know why it’s a log. I just checked out wikipedia, it says As the name indicates, the cake is generally prepared, presented, and garnished so as to look like a log ready for the fire used in the ancient fire-festival of the winter solstice.

And since tree logs are almost always brown all the time, chocolate is the main ingredient. This time, I didn’t wanna put in any chocolate as I’d be making another chocolate cake for my friend’s birthday. I wanted a white / cream log instead. After fiddling some ideas, I went with pumpkin for the cake, and a some roasted chestnut in the centre for some additional crunch and earthy flavour. Swiss rolls for easy shaping! I haven’t got any 1/2 cylinder moulds yet haha, that’s probably why too.

Anyways, I took the recipe from Wendy’s and modified a little. I made 2 actually, 1 to eat ourselves and 1 for the party. Which was the right choice to make, as 1 of it, I kinda screwed up and it looked funny. Haha keep that story aside. Since there’s no picture of a sliced cake, here is how it looks like inside, sorta after chilling in the fridge overnight. Cream, Pumpkin puree and chestnut.

Soft Pumpkin Cake

(C)

1 cup non dairy cream*
2 tsp vanilla extract
50g pumpkin puree
1-2 tbsp sugar
roasted chestnut

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Combine pumpkin puree with milk. Then add in egg yolks and oil. Mix till well blended and put in flour and salt, mix til smooth.
3. Put egg whites into another bowl and beat until frothy. Put in vinegar and continue to beat until soft peaks. Put in sugar and beat until stiff (pointy stiff)
4. Fold 1/3 of egg whites into (B) . Pour (B) into remaining egg whites and fold.
5. Pour into a 12 inch lined square pan, level the batter.
6. Bake for 25 minutes.
7. When cake is done, remove from oven. Let it sit in the pan for 5 minutes, remove from pan (be gentle) and tear down the side liners. Roll the cake without any filling into a swiss roll to set it’s shape. Let cake cool down while you prepare the filling
8. Whip cream to medium peaks. If the pumpkin puree is not sweet enough, add some sugar while it’s still hot. Unroll the swiss roll. Spread a thin layer of whipped cream, pumpkin puree then add chestnuts in the centre. Roll it up into a swiss roll. Make sure it’s tight.
9. With the remaining cream, put in a piping bag with a leaf tip fitted in, Pipe lines to make the swiss roll look like a log. Sprinkle crushed biscuits / roasted dessicated coconut on the base and a little on top. Add some decorations on top to make it Christmasy!

*I find using non-dairy cream in this cake easier to handle as it’s more stable than dairy cream. Plus I had a lot of non-dairy cream I had to clear off. Feel free to use dairy cream as the filling.

They liked it and, well, me too!! The pumpkin cake was really yummy and the golden hue makes it even more pretty. So, you don’t have to make a chocolate log cake. A white log is okay too! There are some birch trees that are pretty white. ehehe

O’right, that’s it for this year, I guess, unless I have more Christmasy things to post up. Otherwise, have a Happy New Year and let’s all usher 2011 in with a great celebration with friends and family. Please, drive safe 🙂