The Christmas Trunk, in French Bûche de Noël, is a typical dessert, served near the end of the year in Portugal and in several French-speaking countries. As its name implies, the cake is commonly prepared and decorated to make it look like a genuine piece of firewood about to be burnt, as used in the old winter solstice festivals.

The traditional cake is the Genovese or the sponge cake, usually cooked on a large tray and rolled into a cylinder. The most common combination is a basic yellow sponge cake, filled with chocolate and buttercream but there are many variations of the original recipe, which may include chocolate cake, ganache and coffee masses. The texture of the bark is produced with melted choclate for a more real look. We achieved this realism by passing the fork at the end. These cakes are often decorated with powdered sugar to look like snow.

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However there is an immense variety of cake and filling.

Dough – It can be a simple vanilla dough or decrease the amount of flour and replace it with cocoa.
Eggs – Replaces with 4 vegan flax eggs. It can also be used 4 crushed half ripe babanas or 3/4 measure of apple puree. These replacements are ideal to give elasticity to the dough and do not allow it to break when rolled.
Stuffing – the sky is the limit. This one I used chocolate mousse (200gr of melted chocolate, 1 can of coconut milk, 1 can of condensed coconut milk and 200 ml of whipped vegan cream).
Topping – we can follow the original and use melted chocoate to make it look like bark or else use your imagination and do something different.

It’s one of my favorite Christmas desserts. We never miss in our table.

Enjoy!