What's a Bûche de Noël? Well, in English, it would be a Yule Log, a fat jellyroll of a cake that's filled and rolled into a long log shape, then iced and decorated to look like a branch fallen in the forest, complete with grooved bark, broken-off stumps,and cute little mushrooms clustered here and there, all under a dusting of powdered sugar "snow."

Typically, the "wood" of the log is a light, spongy cake, baked in a thin layer on a sheet pan. Flexibility is the key here, as the cake needs to keep its shape when rolled up without cracking, smushing, or falling apart. So, most bûche de Noël recipes start with genoise, a French-style sponge cake made from egg yolks, sugar, and a small amount of flour, lightened with stiffly whipped egg whites.

Personally, though, I find that while genoise has a nice springy texture, it tastes like very little, which may be why, in most French desserts, it's usually brushed with liquor or syrups then smothered in fillings and glazes. For true tree-bark verisimilitude, the filling and frosting is typically a truffle-rich, deep-brown chocolate or mocha buttercream. Decorations are exuberant and goofy: bright green-and-red marzipan holly leaves, meringue or marzipan mushrooms, little chocolate banners scrolled in icing spelling out Joyeux Noel.

Classic, then, means old-fashioned, butter-heavy and frankly, a little tacky. But still, the concept remains festive and fun. Why not come up with a seasonal, local cake made for a California Christmas?

So, to start: no more foam-rubber genoise. Instead, an equally light but more substantial almond cake, using whole eggs beaten to a thick cream, then folded together with toasted almonds, flour, and a surprise splash of hot milk.

And instead of a mouthful of chocolate-flavored butter, the filling is a creamy blend of mild fresh goat cheese (chevre) and quark, lightened with whipped cream and flavored with tangerine or clementine zest. I love Spring Hill Jersey Cheese Company's vanilla quark, a mild, spreadable fresh cheese speckled with real vanilla bean, which you can find at many farmer's markets around the Bay Area, but you could substitute Cowgirl Creamery's fromage blanc, or use whipped cream cheese or mascarpone instead.

To decorate, cover your log in lightly toasted almond slices for a rough, eucalyptus-looking bark. Surround with fresh or sugar-dusted rosemary sprigs and whole clementines with leaves or the dried clementine slices sold by local farm Everything Under the Sun. Finally, add a few fat dried figs, poached to plumpness in spiced wine or tea. Nuts, citrus, fresh cheese, dried fruit: that's the taste of California in the wintertime.

Happy Holidays!

California Bûche de Noël
Since both the filling and the cake mixtures require a lot of beating, a stand mixer comes in very handy here. However, you can also use a hand-held electric mixer. Feel free to substitute walnuts or hazelnuts for the almonds; omit almond extract and amaretto. You can make cake, filling, and garnishes the day before serving; filled and rolled, it will keep well in the refrigerator for 1-2 days. Add the garnishes just before serving.

Makes: 1 cake, serves 8-10

Almond Cake

Ingredients:
1 cup sliced almonds, divided
¾ cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
¼ tsp almond extract
2 tbsp amaretto liqueur, optional
1 cup + 1 tsp sugar
½ cup milk
1 tbsp butter

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9" x 13" rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Lightly grease and flour paper, shaking off excess. Sprinkle a thin, clean tea towel with powdered sugar and set aside.

2. To prepare almonds, spread slices out on a baking sheet and bake for 5-8 minutes at 325 degrees, until they smell toasty and are light golden brown in spots. Remove from oven and let cool. Measure out 1/3 cup of almonds, and set remaining almonds aside. Toss 1/3 cup almonds with 1 tsp sugar. Chop finely or, using a food processor or blender, pulse in short bursts into a coarse powder.

3. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together. Stir in ground almonds. Set aside.

4. Beat eggs with vanilla, almond extract, and 1 tbsp amaretto (if using) for 1 minute. Add sugar a little at a time, beating vigorously for at least 5 minutes, until mixture is very thick (about the consistency of soft mayonnaise) and a pale creamy-yellow. When you lift the beaters, the mixture should form a ribbon as it falls back into the bowl.

5. Over low heat, heat milk and butter together until butter is melted and milk is hot but not boiling.

6. Gently fold flour mixture in eggs. Pour in milk and butter and stir gently until batter is smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 30 minutes, or until top is pale golden and springs back when pressed with a fingertip.

7. Holding onto the parchment, lift cake off baking sheet and reverse onto prepared tea towel. Peel off parchment and discard. Using a small sharp knife, trim off any hard or crunchy edges. Starting at the short end closest to you, roll the cake and towel together away from you into a fat log. Set aside to cool for an hour or so. (It’s important to roll up the cake while still hot, so it will stay flexible as it cools.)

Chevre-Citrus Filling
If you're a goat cheese hater, substitute whipped cream cheese or Neufchatel. Leave out the orange liqueur if you don’t want to splurge on a name brand; cheap triple sec will make the whole batch taste like baby aspirin.

Ingredients:
1 cup (8 oz) quark, fromage blanc, or mascarpone cheese
4 oz mild, fresh goat cheese, crumbled
1 tbsp good quality orange liqueur, such as Cointreau or Grand Marnier
2 tbsp honey, or to taste
1 tbsp grated tangerine or clementine zest
1-2 tbsp milk, as needed
1 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp finely chopped candied orange rind and/or 1 tbsp finely chopped candied ginger

Preparation:
1. Beat mascarpone, goat cheese, orange liqueur, honey, and zest together until smooth, adding milk as necessary to get a smooth consistency.

2. In a separate bowl, beat cream to soft peaks. Fold cream gently into mascarpone mixture. Fold in candied rind and/or ginger. Cover and chill until needed.

Sugared Rosemary Sprigs
Fresh rosemary sprigs are a nice touch of greenery around your completed cake. However, if you want to go all out and make them look winter-frosted, beat 1 egg white until frothy. Dip rosemary sprigs into egg white to coat, then dip and turn in granulated sugar to cover. Set aside to dry.

Poached Dried Figs
You can use any liquid you like to poach the figs, such equal parts water and red or white wine; apple cider; or spiced tea.

Ingredients:
10 dried figs
2 cups liquid
Rind of 1 orange or tangerine, in large pieces
1 tbsp honey
1 cinnamon stick
4 or 5 whole cloves

Preparation:
Cover figs with liquid, add rind, honey, and spices. Bring to a simmer and cook over low heat for 20 minutes, or until figs are soft and puffed up. Remove from heat and let cool in liquid. Refrigerate until needed.

To Assemble Cake
Almond Cake
Chevre-Citrus Filling
Remaining toasted almonds
Fresh or Sugared Rosemary Sprigs
Whole clementines with leaves, or dried clementine slices
Poached Dried Figs, drained and halved

1. Unroll cake from towel. Sprinkle with 1 tbsp amaretto, if using. Spread half the filling across cake, leaving a bare margin of about ½ inch on all sides. Starting from the short end again, roll up cake tightly (without towel).

2. Using a butter knife or offset spatula, cover cake with remaining filling. Trim ends to reveal spiral pattern. Press sliced almonds over filling. Drape cake with plastic wrap and chill for several hours or overnight.

3. To serve, arrange rosemary sprigs, clementines (or clementine slices), and figs around cake. Slice and serve, including 2 poached fig halves with each slice.

Beautifully decorated cookies are a high-point of the holiday season for me. This year, I wanted to do a post on tips and strategies for creating gift-worthy sugar cookies at home, and I thought to myself, who better to turn to than the experts at Miette? Lucky for me (and you), Miette holds monthly classes on decorating sugar cookies. In class, you'll learn about necessary equipment, how to make and color royal icing like a pro, how to make parchment icing cones, and techniques for flooding and embellishing cookies. Owner Meg Ray and instructor Jeff Gosche were kind enough to let me sit in on the most recent cookie decorating class, snap some photos, and learn how the Miette elves create their stunning holiday cookies. Today, I'll share those tips with you.

Jeff was our trusty instructor and the man behind the sugar cookie magic at Miette. Jeff doesn't have any formal training or culinary instruction, but he's always been passionate about baking and decorating. He started helping Miette with cookie production solely around the holiday season and then about one year ago, Jeff was asked to stick around more frequently as a regular staple. After spending the afternoon with him, I can see why.

Jeff began class with a discussion on planning out your project and equipment. In terms of planning, it's important to be aware of baking times, cooling times, and setting times for frosting. Jeff recommends taking the entire project into account when thinking about how much time it'll take from Point A to Point B, especially if you'll be gifting or delivering the cookies. The last thing you want to do is rush the process! As far as equipment, a stand mixer, rolling pin, Silpat mat, and cooling racks are important for actually baking the cookies. For decorating, small metal bowls are handy for mixing up numerous different colors of frosting, good quality food coloring, parchment triangles to make your piping cones, and a spoon-spatula to spoon your icing into the bag. If you'd rather not deal with raw egg whites in your royal icing, Jeff recommended meringue powder as an easy and just-as-good substitute.

After we talked equipment, we set about making our own royal icing. Jeff did a demo using the whisk attachment on a stand mixer, turning it up to high (an 8 on a Kitchen Aid) and allowing it to mix for 3-4 minutes. The important thing to know here is that the icing should be quite thick--thicker than you think it should be on an actual cookie. You'll spend time later thinning it after you add the color, not now.

Jeff Gosche talking royal icing & our attentive class

After the demo, students all went back to their stations to add the egg whites and powdered sugar together and begin mixing away.

Learning how to mix up the perfect royal icing

Once everyone had royal icing down, we discussed the art of coloring the icing. Now anyone can throw green food coloring into a bowl of royal icing and call it a day, but it's often very difficult to get more subtle, interesting tones. This is where Jeff's icing tips come in handy:

• It almost always takes more than one color to get the shade you're going for, and Jeff gives an example of the infamous "Miette pink" used on so many of the in-house cookies. How to achieve that perfect pink? Add a little brown to the icing! Jeff explains how adding just a little brown to most colors of royal icing will just tone it way down and add more depth to the color.
• To achieve more warmth in any one color (Christmas red, for example), add orange. Orange is a miracle worker.
• When adding color to your icing, you may want to put the drop of color onto your spatula and work it in slowly. That way, if you add a little too much, it's easier to swipe off with a finger rather than having to scoop out color from the icing itself.
• When you're mixing up bowls of different colors of icing, you also want to cover each bowl with a slightly damp dish towel so the icing doesn't dry out.
• Don't thin out the icing until you're completely done with the color.
• To thin, just add a tiny amount (1/2 teaspoon or so) of water at a time. Ultimately, you want the icing to flow right off your spatula back into the bowl but leave a noticeable ribbon inside your bowl. So it shouldn't be liquidy, but it shouldn't be too thick either.

The Art of Royal Icing

After the icing was made and colored, it was time to get piping! Jeff showed the class how to form parchment piping bags and discussed how nice they are because you can just throw them away. With nicer piping bags, the royal icing can stain and they can be tough to clean.

Learning How to Make Parchment Piping Bags

Parchment cones are tough to describe in print but it turns out Wilton has a handy video so you can learn at home! With piping bags in hand, it was time to decorate the cookies.

Students decorating their Christmas cookies

Jeff's tips for decorating cookies were relatively straightforward and really involved a little planning and practice. He had templates on hand so students could practice their lines and shapes before really committing to a cookie. The gist of it? Outline the cookie first with the royal icing and then you flood (or fill) the cookie in a back-and-forth motion with the tip of the bag slightly immersed in the icing itself (this helps it flood more evenly).

Flooding Cookies

Then you can add sprinkles, add another color to do some blending, or wait around 15 minutes for the icing to dry so you can layer in another color. It does help to do a little planning and thinking about what you're going for with your design to ensure you have enough of each color and don't sit there stumped (as I did) seeking out inspiration while your icing is slowly drying out.

I can't recommend Miette's classes enough and thank Jeff and Meg for letting me tag along. The classes are sold out through February (so get on the March bandwagon!), but they're thinking about possibly adding additional cookie classes and, of course, there are other classes as well if you're ready to dive right in to the pastry/confection world. Happy baking and royal icing making!

Trifle is a dessert I rarely had as a kid, although I dreamed of it often. Over the Christmas holiday, my mother would entertain me with tales of Zuppa Inglese, an Italian version of trifle, along with the many other dishes her Neopolitan-raised grandmother prepared. Home baked lady fingers or cake molded into a dish with Italian liqueurs drizzled artfully on top and then fruit and whipped cream nestled in mounds. I loved that the dish's name included "Inglese," as my many readings of books like The Secret Garden made me fantasize about the possibility that I was actually an English heiress who somehow became entrapped in my San Diego life. But Zuppa Inglese also made me yearn for the close-knit Italian family and traditions now absent from my life after my family's move to California. It was the perfect hybrid of all that I desired -- the comforts of a family left behind as well as the mystique of merry Olde England.

Yet as much as I begged my mother to make Zuppa Inglese for our own Christmas feasts, she refused. After all, there were only the five of us in San Diego, so she said that making homemade lady fingers was just too time consuming and also too much work for a small crowd. I've since learned, however, that she didn't think the dish was worth eating without strawberries steeped in Anisette, and as she couldn't very well serve us an alcohol-laden dessert, she opted to simply wait until we were older. This isn't to say I suffered a lack of goodies. Between the sweet ricotta cakes, struffoli, and numerous cookies, there was no shortage of treats; but I still yearned for trifle.

My cravings were satisfied when I met my husband, whose family hails originally from places like England and Germany. Trifle was the name of the game at his family's Christmas dessert table, although their trifle was made with pound cake and the alcohol was not in attendance. So now, after 16 years of joining my husband's and my own family holiday traditions, I've become pretty adept at making this tiered holiday dessert. I've also realized that although homemade lady fingers in Zuppa Inglese are wonderful, trifle doesn't necessarily have to require a lot of work.

Making trifle shouldn't be difficult. As much as I love lady fingers drizzled with Anisette, I am rational enough to admit that my good intentions for baking them myself are more idealistic than realistic. I do, however, like to make cake. That said, if you aren't one to bake anything, don't let that stop you. Just buy a cake and assemble. The truth of the matter is that trifle can be one of the easiest holiday desserts you can create. In essence, making a trifle should be a trifle (pun intended). Although you can make everything from scratch, you can also simply purchase many of the layered items and then construct your trifle as you see fit.

In addition to those lovely lady fingers, there are many other items you can use for the base. My holiday favorite is gingerbread, but sponge cake is traditional, and pound cake works beautifully. The toppings themselves should be chosen according to your own individual cravings. I personally love lemon curd with my beloved gingerbread, so often use that along with a fresh berry sauce and whipped cream. But you can also use jams, pastry cream, crème fraiche, persimmons, or frozen peaches that have been thawed out and cooked in a little sugar. Trifle is sort of a kitchen sink dessert, so add in whatever you thinks sounds appealing. This includes alcohol. If Anisette or Chambord sound like nice additions, drizzle some on. If you're not in the mood or serving the dish to children, just leave them out.

Once you've established your ingredients list, just layer everything in a glass bowl so you can show off the different tiers of goodies. I like to invert the top of a cake plate (which people also often use as a punch bowl) as this puts the trifle on a little stand that can be displayed on the holiday table. If you don't have one of these, a regular large glass bowl works just as well.

So this holiday season, throw together your own trifle or Zuppa Inglese with whatever you like. This dessert actually tastes better if it sits for a day or so in the refrigerator, so it's a great make-ahead dish for holiday parties.

Here are some basic directions along with lists of potential ingredients you can use, but really, the sky's the limit.

How to make a trifle
1. Make or purchase your cake or cookies of choice, slicing them into 2-inch pieces.

2. Make or purchase your sauces, jams, curds or creams.

3. Cut up your fruit and cook any fruit compote you might include.

4. Whip up or purchase your whipped cream.

5. If using alcohol, have it on hand for assembly.

6. Place your bowl next to your ingredients and then layer them. I start with the cake or cookies at the bottom, and then top these with a sprinkle of whatever alcohol is to be used (Note: I omitted the alcohol from my recipe years ago to make the dish kid-friendly, but if you're not serving children, it's a nice addition). You can then layer on the fruit or jam so it seeps into the cake or cookies. Top these with any pastry cream, lemon curd, crème fraîche or whipped cream you decide to use and then start all over again until you have a full bow. End with a layer of whipped cream and then top with berry sauce, chocolate shavings, fruit slices, cherries, or whatever else sounds good.

Possible Trifle Bases

Gingerbread cake
Vanilla cake
Ladyfinger cookies
Pumpkin cake
Pound cake
Sponge cake
Pannettone
Stollen
Meringue cookies

Possible Trifle Fillings

Lemon curd
Whipped cream
Pastry cream
Berry sauce
Jam (heating it first makes it easier to drizzle on the cake)
Greek Yogurt with orange zest mixed in
Crème fraîche
Marscapone
Chocolate cream
Pudding

Possible Alcohols to Include

Anisette
Grand Marnier
Brandy
Cognac
Port
Sherry
Bourbon
Kirsch
Chambord

Possible Fruits and Nuts

Sliced fresh berries or frozen berries cooked into a compote or sauce (Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, or strawberries)
Peaches
Cherries
Crystalized dried fruits
Almonds
Hazelnuts
Persimmons
Poached pears