Pin of the Week: Yule Log (recipe mash-up)

So for Christmas dinner, basically all the dishes were accounted for so I opted for dessert (as I often do) and thought since I'd done a pumpkin roll that I would try making a Yule Log or Buche de Noel, since I've always thought they were so pretty and neat - and I've never had one before! 

It wasn't quite as easy as the pumpkin roll - the first cake recipe was a total bust and had to be tossed. The second was doable, although it did crack in like 3 spots when I unrolled to put in the filling - it worked out though, I still filled it - rolled it back up - and froze it so it stayed together. But you can see when we cut into it the places where the cake broke. And for fun, I decided to make some meringue mushrooms for decoration - this recipe was ok, I mean it worked, but later on I found a recipe that called for cream of tarter added in to keep the mushrooms white. Also this recipe has the baking wrong time, these ended up almost burnt, and they were in there for less than half the time! 

In the end it was a very delicious, rich, chocolatey dessert that we never even could finish all of (and this was 12 people working on it). I'm glad I had the chance to try making one, but I can't say for sure if I'll try it again :)

Here's the cake recipe I used. (didn't think the filling looked that great)

Here's the recipe I used for the filling and icing (but the cake recipe was terrible).

Here's the link to the mushrooms.