Happy 2021 dear readers 🙂 I hope after all the craziness of 2020, this new year will bring peace and slowly lead us back to normality.

Christmas is about 11.5 months away, but it doesn’t mean you can’t start gathering ideas for Christmas 2021 baking plans! Today’s recipe is one of my favourite cakes I’ve ever made – mainly because the final result always looks spectacular, and yet it’s really simple to make. A Yule log cake, with a hazelnut twist. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Cake (35x24cm tray):

• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 112g sugar
• 72g plain flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 45g dark cocoa powder

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.

Using an electric mixer, whisk the eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy. Sift in the remaining ingredients and gently stir with a spatula.

Bake for 11 minutes, then immediately take out. Cover the tray with a tea towel and flip it upside down, to get the cake out of the tray, onto the towel. If you baked the cake on a baking paper, peel it off. Then, immediately tightly roll the cake – with the towel – along the longer side and leave to cool, for about an hour. You need to be quick with this step and roll the cake while it’s still steaming hot – that way it won’t crack and break into pieces.

Filling:

• 180g double cream
• 200g mascarpone
• 150g ground hazelnuts
• 50g chopped up dark chocolate
• 3/4 cup icing sugar

When the cake has nearly completely cooled down, start preparing the hazelnut filling.

Whip the cream with an electric whisk, then add mascarpone and sugar and mix again. Stir in hazelnuts and chocolate with a spatula.

Once the cake has cooled down (don’t rush this process), gently unroll it and remove the towel. Spread the filling onto the cake and roll it back.

Cut the cake at about 1/3 of the length at an angle, then place that bit at the side of the log to create a second branch – see the photo below.

Outer layer:

• 130g butter, soft, in room temperature
• 2 tablespoons double cream
• 8 tablespoons icing sugar
• 3 tablespoons dark cocoa

Finally, whisk together the ingredients for the outer layer of the cake, which will make the dark brown bark. Evenly coat the cake with the chocolate cream.

Decoration:

• hazelnuts
• fresh rosemary
• icing sugar
• pattern made with a fork

For decoration, make a bark pattern in the chocolate layer using a fork. Add hazelnuts and fresh rosemary for nice details, then sprinkle the whole cake with icing sugar.

Store the cake in the fridge.

Enjoy!