Chocolate cranberry cream yule log

It has been cool and rainy for the last weekend but my family had a wonderful time at Santaland at Melbourne city Myer store where all the kids meet their Santa and have their Christmas train ride at the basement of the store. The shopping at the toy section was full of chaos and lots of long queues at the cashier counters.

Yup! Christmas is just 2 weeks to go and I'm getting lots of stress to get everything ready for this festive season. On Saturday night, I had to wrap Christmas presents until 1 am and still have lots of baking, shopping and wrapping to do.

This cake is actually featured on the front cover of BBC Australian GoodFood Magazine, December issue. I had an almost-replicate of the cake but without the sugared cranberries and bay leaves which are just decorations for the cake and I find them kind of "redundant". LOL.

Eventually, my son loves this cake and ate most of it. 

Here's the recipe from the current issue of BBC Australian GoodFood magazine (Dec 2010 issue) with minor modifications.

50g plain flour
5 eggs
110g caster sugar, plus 2 tsp extra to dust
25g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
40g almond meal
100g frozen cranberry (plus extra to scatter on top of the cake)
300ml thickened cream (I use only 150ml)
1 tbsp icing sugar (I didn't add this) 

grated rind of 1 orange (I didn't add this)
275g jar cranberry sauce

chocolate ganache:
125ml thicken cream (I use 80ml)
300g dark chocolate, chopped (I use 200g)

1. Preheat oven to 190°C. Grease and line 37cm x 25cm Swiss roll pan with baking paper (My tray is 30cm x 20cm). Dust pan with extra flour.

2. Using an electric mixer, beat eggs and sugar for 6-8 min until pale and thick. Sift flour, cocoa and baking powder in a bowl and stir in almond meal. Gently fold in the flour mixture into the egg mixture and pour the batter in the prepared pan. Bake for 15-18 min until sponge springs back when touched.

3. Dust baking paper with the extra caster sugar. Cool sponge in pan for 1 min, then turn out into the prepared baking paper. Peel baking paper from the base of sponge and discard. Using the sugared paper as a guide, start from the short side and roll up sponge away from you, so the sugared paper is rolled inside the sponge. Cool completely.

4.Whip cream, icing sugar and orange rind until soft peak form. Unroll sponge. Spread with cranberry sauce, top with cream mixture and scatter over cranberry. Using the paper as a guide, re-roll sponge as tightly as possible. Do not roll sponge with paper inside. Chill for 30 min.

5. To make ganache, heat cream in a pan on medium-low heat until it start to bubble. remove from heat. Add chocolate. Stand for 2 min. Stir until smooth. Cool for 1 hr 30 min.

6. Spread chocolate ganache over sponge roll. Cut into slices and serve.

Happy Baking

Please support me and like me at Facebook.