Wooden Treasure!

Making log cakes on Christmas Eve has become some sort of tradition for my mum as we go over to my uncle's house for Christmas. The cakes would then be the tea time "attraction", rounding off a hearty lunch and present swapping. Merry day indeed!

But scheduling conflicts led to the cancellation of Christmas gatherings for the past 2 years and this sadly meant no log cakes. However, the gathering was confirmed this year so the log cake was sort of resurrected and brought back from the...uhhm....cake graveyard.

I've always loved log cakes - something about them just sparks the festive mood in me! I'll sit at the table watching my mum roll the cakes, cream them and stick on the wonderfully colourful decorations to create these beauties!

So this year I thought it was about time I got stuck in and made my own logcake. I had a chocolate hazelnut cream one in mind months before Christmas Eve but I had to scrap the idea at the eleventh hour. The hazelnut powder I wanted to mix with the chocolate had been in the fridge for too long and it had become completely tasteless. I tasted the chocolate-hazelnut paste after mixing some and it felt like chocolate with bits of gravel...not cool.

Sadly, I had to be content with a plain chocolate log cake but oh well...there's always next year I suppose! My mum made the other cake a durian flavoured one that was white as snow! My whole house was filled with the heady scent of the king of fruits as the durian pulp was cooked, mixed in with the cream, spread over the cake and rolled into heavenly Swiss rolls...let me pause to empty my drool bucket.

After the the cakes were creamed and the "log lines" were drawn, all that was left was to decorate them and make them look all Christmassy. Thankfully both cakes turned out well in the end...though rolling Swiss rolls can be extremely stressful and terribly messy!

Anyways,

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!