Beating Around the Bûche (de Nöel)
Ellen Goldberg takes on the labor-intensive traditional holiday yule log for her Jewish mother.
Last December my mother, June, then 95, requested a Bûche de Noël. We are Jewish and celebrate neither Noël nor most Jewish holidays, but we never miss a nosh-up. Traditionally, when I was growing up, we gathered on Christmas in our Manhattan apartment for Szechuan East takeout, before catching a movie.
I am now 58, and Szechuan East is long gone. When not celebrating with friends, my preferred nativity rite is to order in from Joe’s Shanghai, sip Prosecco, and nest on my velvet sofa streaming BBC’s Pride and Prejudice. I call it “Dumplings with Darcy.” If pressed for time, I watch Bridget Jones and apply “Dumplings with Darcy” to that one. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman of a certain age must be in want of watching Colin Firth dive into that Pemberley lake, at least annually, while she enjoys xiaolongbao and mapo tofu.
Last year, I wanted to spend Christmas with Mom. Recently widowed after seventy years with Dad, she’d spent Thanksgiving hospitalized with pneumonia. Mom is wheelchair-bound and relies on home attendants. A talented painter and pianist, her vision and hearing have faded. Her mind and taste buds remain intact. We find joy where we can.
Mom has spent her life caring for others: Dad, three kids (and later, two daughters-in-law and two grandchildren), two houses, and my Grandma Eva, who lived to 94. Every holiday, dutifully, Mom cooked what everyone else wanted, including more than sixty consecutive turkeys. And she despises turkey.
Now, we care for her. Lately, she craves dishes from her childhood, so I make her fluffy cheese blintzes, and we kibitz over our mutual disdain for Trump. She is not done mothering us but, with her blessing, I plan holiday meals. Asked for guidance, she typically responds, “What would everyone else like?”
Last December, she was resolute.
“I’d love a Bûche de Noël.”
Vexed, I did not recall eating that dessert — an elaborately decorated Yule Log — at our family table. Mom’s parents fled Russian pogroms, making their way to the New Jersey farm where Mom was born, before moving to Manhattan.
During the Depression, Grandma Eva became a seamstress (eventually opening her own couture boutique). Mom’s father, a general contractor, headed west to build houses for Frank Lloyd Wright, rendering my grandmother a de facto single working mother. By necessity she sent Mom, age 7, and her older brother to boarding school.
Mom craved stability. After graduating from NYU, she became a secretary. Her boss’s wife introduced her to a “cute med student” who studied music with a family friend. Mom married Dad five days after he graduated, becoming a homemaker, but she’d never learned to cook as a child.
Grandma cooked superbly, relying on “shit recipes” — never written down, always delectable. She had abundant time for me, her youngest grandchild. On weekends, we cooked corned beef and stuffed cabbage, while she regaled me with stories of her customers, or “cuspidors.”
She called me “Cookie,” but rarely baked, other than strudel. After stretching dough across her formica kitchen table, we stuffed it with poppy seeds, then rolled and baked it. Grandma sliced it on a cutting board that slid out from her counter, and served it with coffee so strong it “walked out of the pot.”
Last December my mother, June, then 95, requested a Bûche de Noël. We are Jewish and celebrate neither Noël nor most Jewish holidays, but we never miss a nosh-up. Traditionally, when I was growing up, we gathered on Christmas in our Manhattan apartment for Szechuan East takeout, before catching a movie. I am now 58, and Szechuan East is long gone.
Distancing herself from Grandma and her old-world origins, Mom rarely made Jewish food. Ever studious, she learned to cook from Julia Child. After Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published in 1961, Mom navigated through both volumes, from Aspic to Zucchini Tian.
Her culinary awakening occurred as she raised three picky children. I lunched on PB&J every day for three years during elementary school, and ate so many tuna sandwiches that my cousins nicknamed me Queen Tunafish. Fortunately, my tastes evolved, eventually.
Grandma taught me to cook, but Mom gave me chef’s tools. From Mom, I learned to follow a recipe and separate eggs. She had a pegboard — like Julia’s — hung with every conceivable kitchen gizmo, and was an early adopter of the food processor.
Mom showcased her artistry at dinner parties, obsessing endlessly over menus. In the 1970s, Julia’s Coq au Vin gave way to Chicken Marbella. I still have a copper fish-shaped mold from Mom’s salmon mousse era.
She rarely made dessert, relying on William Greenberg’s, famous for impeccably decorated cakes. On each shop visit, Mr. Greenberg handed me a cookie and I watched, mesmerized, as he stood at a cake stand, etching delicate designs onto ganache.
For her soirées, Mom laid the table with a crisp tablecloth, English china, and sterling flatware before donning hostess pajamas, and exiling me to her room. Sprawled on my parents’ bed, I watched CBS’s Saturday lineup, starting with All in the Family and M*A*S*H. Hawkeye Pierce was my first heartthrob, until I threw him over for Mr. Darcy. I progressed to Mary Tyler Moore (famous for epically disastrous dinner parties), while piano music and laughter drifted down the hall.
When they finally served dessert, during Carol Burnett’s opening monologue, Dad brought me cake. I would fall asleep in their room and, magically, wake up in my own bed.
Mom discovered baking when Upper East Side doyenne Maida Heatter published her Book of Great Desserts, in 1974. Maida, then 58, graced the cover of that maroon tome, hair impeccably coiffed, gazing out across a display of flawless sweets, including meringue mushrooms.
Mom has spent her life caring for others: Dad, three kids (and later, two daughters-in-law and two grandchildren), two houses, and my Grandma Eva, who lived to 94. Every holiday, dutifully, Mom cooked what everyone else wanted, including more than sixty consecutive turkeys. And she despises turkey.
That year, Mom purchased a Kitchen Aid mixer, to whip egg whites for meringue. Together, we mastered the recipe, but never piped the mushrooms. I folded in chocolate chips, and dolloped spoonfuls onto a baking sheet. We called them kisses, crisp clouds that exploded and melted in the mouth, leaving the lingering ephemera of sugar, chocolate and vanilla. Mom bought me my own Kitchen Aid for my first apartment; it remains my most treasured possession.
If Mom wanted Bûche de Noël, she would have it, once I learned to make it. I texted my friend Lucio, a pastry chef. He emailed back his recipe — flourless chocolate genoise, topped with Swiss mocha buttercream, and decorated with marzipan mushrooms, pinecones, and holly leaves. Lucio advised me to make the decorations in advance, and whip the frosting before baking the cake, so I could roll it quickly after it came out of the oven.
Reading his intricate instructions, I froze, loath to test a new recipe on my perfectionist mother. Mom’s good opinion once lost is lost forever. Rather than telling me she doesn’t like a dish, Mom tells me how she would do it. After I served a slightly dry brisket one Passover, she explained that had I cooked it for hours at low heat, like she always did, it would be tender. We had salmon for the next three years.
Riding home on the M86 crosstown, I decided to “cook with the phone,” and ordered a Bûche from a local bakery, which Mom enjoyed. Because we ate early, I kept my date with Colin Firth.
On Boxing Day, I binged Season 2 of Julia, HBO’s series based on Julia Child. Up popped Episode 5, “Bûche de Noël.” By the tenth time Julia said “Bûche de Noël” in her lilting cadence, I decided to make one for my neighbor’s New Year’s Day supper. Muriel, my apartment building auntie, is a Canadian retiree and sculptor who hosts an annual holiday party for church friends. She is always thankful when I bring home-made treats.
If Mom wanted Bûche de Noël, she would have it, once I learned to make it. I texted my friend Lucio, a pastry chef. He emailed back his recipe — flourless chocolate genoise, topped with Swiss mocha buttercream, and decorated with marzipan mushrooms, pinecones, and holly leaves.
On December 30, I opened the marzipan and formed several balls, fashioning them into stems and caps, which I pressed together before smudging them with cocoa. They looked like mushrooms, sort of. I sent Lucio a picture.
“Perfect,” he responded.
Feeling validated, I posted a photo online. My friends follow my kitchen antics, particularly Alison, another chef.
Moving to the pinecones, I kneaded cocoa into the marzipan, rolled little pointed cylinders, and used scissors to carve scales. They looked like cat turds. I texted Lucio.
“The pinecone is a terror,” he replied.
Lucio confessed that he found silicone molds at a baking supply store, and made impeccable pinecones. I googled the shop, which opened at 10am on New Year’s Eve, and had molds in stock. I added marzipan to my shopping list, then ate two conifer turds. Delicious.
For the holly, I folded green food coloring into more marzipan, flattened it, cut out triangles, and etched veins into the leaves. The ombre color looked exquisite but the details were wrong. I added leaf molds to my list, feeling beaten by this log.
I mixed red food coloring into the last bit of marzipan and rolled several tiny perfect berries, but wished I’d worn gloves. My hands looked like Lady MacBeth’s.
“Out, damn spot,” I shouted, then posted a shot of my “bloodied” paw online. Alison had commented on my earlier post.
“I love meringue mushrooms.”
I scrubbed my hands and pulled Maida off the shelf. How hard could it be to pipe mushrooms? I added piping tips to the list. The next morning, I had the store to myself. A hundred dollars later, I headed back uptown.
Starting with the mushrooms, I brought eggs to room temperature and measured the other ingredients. I separated the eggs and started my trusty mixer. As I added cream of tartar, sugar and vanilla, the egg whites morphed, magically, into a lacquer sheened marshmallow-like consistency. I felt like an alchemist. I filled a pastry bag, piped the mushrooms, and put them in the oven.
On Boxing Day, I binged Season 2 of Julia, HBO’s series based on Julia Child. Up popped Episode 5, “Bûche de Noël.” By the tenth time Julia said “Bûche de Noël” in her lilting cadence, I decided to make one for my neighbor’s New Year’s Day supper. Muriel, my apartment building auntie, is a Canadian retiree and sculptor who hosts an annual holiday party for church friends. She is always thankful when I bring home-made treats.
After they cooled, I affixed the stems to the caps with melted chocolate. Then I turned them over and dusted them with cocoa. They were perfect — faultless faux fungi. On to the pinecones!
Recycling marzipan from the original mushrooms, I kneaded in cocoa, and pressed the mixture into the mold, making two perfect pinecone halves, which I glued together with chocolate. Delirious, I stamped out several exquisite holly leaves.
On January 1, I tackled the log. The recipe uses twelve eggs and a pound of butter. I considered adding Lipitor. I whipped the buttercream first.
To make the genoise, I separated the eggs, beating the yolks and whites separately with sugar. I scraped the yolk mixture into melted chocolate, folded that back into the egg whites, spread the batter onto a sheet pan, and baked it for fifteen minutes, while praying to the pastry gods. I used half my kitchen equipment, but it rose beautifully.
Over the summer, Mom mentioned the Bûche again. I asked why she was fixated on that dessert. Maybe it had to do with dissociating herself from her childhood with Grandma. “It just seems festive,” she answered. Fingers crossed, I will make her one this Christmas.
I took the cake out of the oven and flipped it onto a sheet of parchment. Then, things went sideways. When Lucio told me to frost the cake immediately, he neglected to remind me to let it cool. As I spread icing over the still warm cake, it started to melt. Using strudel muscle memory, I rolled quickly, and shoved it into the refrigerator. Buttercream hides a multitude of sins.
An hour later, I assembled the masterpiece. To make a “stump,” I cut off one end of the roll on the bias to attach to the body of the cake with frosting. Per Lucio, I balanced the stump atop the log, at a right angle. The cake looked happy to see me. For propriety, I repositioned it beside the log, covering it with leaves and mushrooms. I frosted the cake, dragged a fork through the buttercream, creating furrows in the bark, and finished with a flurry of confectioners’ sugar.
Muriel and her friends received my creation with fanfare, and took photos before we devoured it.
Confidence regained, I intended to make a “Bûche de Juin," for Mom’s birthday. But she requested a Greenberg cake. And it was so.
Over the summer, Mom mentioned the Bûche again. I asked why she was fixated on that dessert. Maybe it had to do with dissociating herself from her childhood with Grandma.
“It just seems festive,” she answered. Fingers crossed, I will make her one this Christmas.
That cake epitomizes Mom: It requires organization, training and technical skill and results in visual perfection. Each element of creating that Bûche utilized techniques I learned from her, Grandma, Julia, Maida and Lucio. And rolled up inside that artistry is an ephemeral sweetness that makes me feel celebrated, safe and loved.
Previously, Ellen Goldberg wrote “How the Turducken Stole Thanksgiving” for Oldster.
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"I considered adding Lipitor." Hahaha!
This was funny and tender and so relatable. Thank you for this homage to your mother, Happy Noël. ❤️