Fresh from the Holiday Workshop, Just Roll with a Festive Bûche de Noël
Bi-Rite Creamery serves thousands of holiday pies and cookies. But dessert insiders look forward to the most magical cake of the year.
Becky Duffett
After taking care of the turkey and setting out all the sides, let’s not forget about dessert. With all of the effort that goes into a holiday feast, why not let Bi-Rite make the cake, so you can simply slide a box in the back of the fridge, and pull out a dazzler at the end of the night. For a small but discerning crowd of cake insiders, it doesn’t feel like Christmas without a festive Bûche de Noël. “It’s such a fun dessert,” says Kris Hoogerhyde of Bi-Rite Creamery. “I love how no two will ever look the same. It allows for so much creativity.”
The Creamery has been making Bûche de Noël by hand for 12 years. When owners Hoogerhyde and Anne Walker introduced a yule log, they weren’t looking for a hot take on a classic cake, they wanted to hit big nostalgia. Over the years, they settled on a fudgy chocolate cake, salted caramel buttercream, and dark chocolate glaze. They eventually pruned down the shape from several branches to a single stump. They found that’s less intimidating to serve, simply slicing down the log, rather than having to deconstruct.
Of course, the key ingredient is chocolate. “It’s a very rich, decadent chocolate cake,” says executive pastry chef Jessica Penner, who joined Hoogerhyde in the past few years. They rely on Guittard, one of the oldest family-run factories in the country, with a rich history dating back 155 years. “I’m happily a chocolate snob,” Penner admits. At one point the cake was actually triple chocolate, filled with milk chocolate buttercream. But they swapped in salted caramel for that burnt sugar edge, folded into an Italian buttercream with whipped egg whites for an almost marshmallow velvety texture.
Becky Duffett
Many people prefer to celebrate with a cake they wouldn’t bake themselves at home. With Bûche de Noël, they fear that critical moment of rolling the cake into a tight cylinder. Even pro bakers have been known to blanch. “You can’t be afraid with the first initial roll, because the more you hesitate, you’re going to crack it and lose momentum,” Hoogerhyde explains. As a result, there are plenty of bland jelly rolls in this world that sacrifice flavor for flexibility, but that’s not how these bakers roll. Bi-Rite’s rich version defies a perfect spiral, in favor of an outrageously fudgy cake, so asymmetry is part of the magic.
The team spends days prepping the components. Then when it comes time to decorate, the entire kitchen seems to pause. The bakers set up an assembly line, almost like a holiday workshop: One rolls the cakes, another cuts the stumps, the next coats in buttercream, another roughs up the chocolate glaze, and the last trims the tree. Candied rosemary and cranberries sparkle like frost, and meringue mushrooms seem to sprout from the bark, transforming a tube of cake into a woodland scene. There is a pastry chef debate about button mushrooms, which technically wouldn’t grow on a tree. But Bi-Rite is sticking with cute buttons, made of tempting meringue — forget about flavorless fondant.
Becky Duffett
When you tote a box home, the cake holds up beautifully in the fridge for a few days. The only note is to make sure it comes to room temperature before slicing and serving, so the buttercream gets extra luscious, at least 30 minutes and up to 2 to 3 hours. To take it over the top, Hoogerhyde adds a dollop of whipped crème fraîche for a touch of tart.
In other holiday desserts, some people never tire of pie, and apple and pecan flavors run all season — the team makes thousands. The cookies are by far the bestsellers, including sparkly sugar, jammy thumbprints, and chewy molasses. While peppermint bark makes a snazzy gift, with a crush of candy canes. And as long as we’re celebrating Christmas in sunny California, why not gloat a little with seasonal ice creams like brandied eggnog and candy cane.
By comparison, the bakers only roll a few hundred Bûche de Noël. But Penner herself brings one home to her family at Christmas. “I get a lot of satisfaction from something that looks and tastes really good,” she says. And of course, her kids decorate a plate of cookies for Santa.
Becky Duffett is a food writer living and eating in San Francisco. Follow her on Instagram at @beckyduffett.
