Vegan Yule Log

Last year, the star on the Christmas dessert menu was my amazing Christmas Fruit Cake. For this year, I felt that nothing screams ‘Christmas’ like this glorious Vegan Yule Log. A yule log or Bûche De Noël is a very popular French chocolate cake filled with a deliciously creamy icing (either white or chocolate) and covered with a nice and creamy chocolate ganache. Really that’s all it is to it. The magic really happens when it comes to decorating it and my take on the decoration is guaranteed to impress the crowd.

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Replacing the Eggs in the Cake

The traditional sponge cake calls for a lot of eggs; however since we’re making it vegan, we’ll instead use 2 key ingredients:

• Flax egg: A flax egg is a mix of ground flax seeds and water. One flax egg is made of 1 Tbsp of ground flax seeds and 3 Tbsp of water. When these two are mixed together, after a few minutes they form a gel-like consistency. This is used a lot in baking and in recipes that call for a binder (check out my recipes for vegan meatballs, meatloaf and burger)

• Vinegar and baking soda: When vinegar comes in contact with baking soda, it produces a chemical reaction that mimic what eggs do in baking. Actually when mixing baking soda with an acidic solution, a foam is formed. I’ve used this mixture in my kelp noodle recipes.

Chocolate Sponge Sheet Cake

Once you understand how to work around the issue of replacing eggs, the rest is a piece of cake (see what I did there lol).

As it is for most baking recipe, the first thing you need to do is preheat your oven at 350F.

Next, you need to mix the dry Ingredients: In a mixing bowl sift in the flour, corn starch, baking powder, baking soda, and cocoa powder. Add the salt and mix it in with a whisk and set it aside.

Moving on to the wet Ingredients: In a separate mixing bowl, add in the sugar, soy milk, coconut oil, apple cider vinegar, coconut yogurt and flax egg (remember this is 1 Tbsp of ground flax seeds and 3 Tbsp of water that we let rest for about 5 minutes).

All that’s left to do is to mix the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix them with a whisk until the mixture becomes homogeneous.

Grease and line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and pour in the batter. Make sure to spread the batter as much as possible on the baking sheet. Pop the tray in the oven and bake for 12 minutes or until you can insert a toothpick in the cake and it comes out dry.

Spread a kitchen towel on your working surface and dust some cocoa powder or powdered sugar. This will prevent the cake from sticking on the kitchen towel. Flip the cake over the kitchen towel and gently roll it inside the kitchen towel from one end to the other while it’s still hot. This will make it easier to re-roll the cake once we add the filling. Let the cake rest for 30 min at room temperature.

Chocolate Whipped Cream

In a mixing bowl add the butter. Sift in the powdered sugar and cocoa powder. Mix everything with a hand mixer until smooth. Then add the rum extract and mix until incorporated.

Chocolate Ganache

Place the chocolate over a saucepan of hot water and let the chocolate melt. Mix from time to time until fully melted. Add the coconut cream (make sure to not include the water from the bottom of the can). Mix with a hand mixer or stand mixer until fully incorporated.

Vegan Yule Log

Gently unroll the cake. Don’t worry if the cake cracks a little. Spread the chocolate icing all over the cake. Make sure not to overload the cake with the icing. Gently roll the cake back (no need to roll it inside the towel again) and it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Once out of the fridge, slice about a quarter of the log diagonally and place on the side of the log. Apply the chocolate ganache all over the log. Then use a chopstick to create a pattern of curvy and interrupted lines all over the log. Then the log rest in the fridge for about 15 min or until the ganache firms up.

Once out of the fridge, gently run a knife between the lines we created with the chopstick. Then decorate the log as you please. Check out my vegan meringue mushrooms. Also, sliced almonds and pomegranate seeds are great options. Merry Christmas and stay bless.

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