During a conversation about Julia Child, my proclaimed that it's no tragedy that she never had children. Otherwise, she couldn't have become Julia Child, Amercian queen of gourmet cooking. Although I think she should have gotten to have kids if she wanted them, I kinda see his point. She might've had her hands full and not been so possessed to be succeed as a chef. Don't ask me why, but this conversation inspired me to make the greatest holiday dessert ever: Bûche de Noël, or the Yule Log, as it is commonly known. I've seen it lovingly prepared by Jacques Pépin, elongated to ridiculous proportions at Disneyland on a Guy Fieri Christmas special, and mass-produced on Unwrapped. It seems like a smallish cake for all the steps involved in its preparation. But I'm well-versed in all the building blocks. Well, all except for one. 
You start with a chocolate creme-filled jelly roll, and frost that sucker. Easy enough. Jacques dotted his lovely chocolate-encrusted Bûche with mushroom meringues (this is really the only way meringues should be made) and white chocolate leaves and branches. So much fun stuff. I wanted to make this confectionary ode to nature it from the ground up, so to speak. The only problem was the sheet cake. I'd never made one, and even Jacques got his from the bakery rather than bothering himself to make it. I trotted down to the House of Fine Chocolates, sure they would be able to hook me up. Although they make sheet cakes all day long, unfortunately, they don't sell 'em. The gal at H of FC told me to just bake a box cake in a sheet pan. Now, the chef at Disneyland said the recipe uses one part cornstarch, one part flour to ensure a springy texture, so a box recipe couldn't possibly work. I tried in vain to contact the Dominick's bakery department, but couldn't find a number. How hard could it be to make a sheet cake? I found a recipe online.
I went home and followed the recipe to a T. It smelled delicious. I never considered the fact that there were no eggs included in the list of ingredients. After a few minutes of baking, the wonderful smell turned to a smoky smell. I opened the oven, and my sheet cake was bubbling over, spilling out into the hot oven, looking like a huge toasted marshmallow. I covered my hands in towels and gingerly extracted the molten mess from the rack. After it cooled, I sang a little hymn, and dumped it all in the garbage. It was time to consult The Joy of Cooking. After much page-flipping, I found a simple recipe for sheet cake. The mixture seemed hardly enough to cover the bottom of the pan, but miraculously, it bubbled and grew like a science experiment. It came out perfect. I started the meringues, which commandeered the oven for two hours, forcing me to steam our fish dinner on the stovetop (which ended up tasting awesome). I found another recipe in the cookbook for Chocolate Crème Patissière (basically pudding, but from scratch), and let everything cool overnight.
I melted chocolate for the meringues the next morning. What I didn't use, I spread out on a sheet of wax paper. I melted and added a handful of butterscotch morsels to add some color, et voilà, tree bark! I melted and burned half of the white chocolate. Starting over, I had no more green food coloring, just what was left over after scraping the bowl. I melted the rest with more caution, and created light green leaves and twigs on another sheet of wax paper. The holly berries were stolen from Marky's bag of dark chocolate M&Ms.
I'm going to be completely honest, after my epic cake fail, successfully filling and rolling the cake, creating all the decorations and bark, I'd been working for 2 days. I was mentally drained. The frosting came from a can, okay? Don't judge me. I stuck the bark to the frosting, and stuck the goodies to the bark with melted chocolate.Now, let's not pretend you're actually going to attempt to make this thing. Just have me over to your house for your next holiday gathering, and I'll make it for you. If you try to outdo my craftiness, I might get my feelings hurt. That's why I'm sparing you from reading every recipe involved. I will, however, give you a tip that you can use for frosting any cake. You know the pesky frosting around the edge of the cake that you can never perfectly wipe off the plate? Well, rather than lining your plate with a big square of wax paper and plopping the cake atop, cut four strips of wax paper, and place them under the north/east/south/west areas, masking off the plate. When you're done frosting, you can just pull them out carefully. No messy frosting.
The cake was truly delicious and a rewarding endeavor. Would I have felt so accomplished if I'd gotten the sheet cake premade? Probably not. I'm no Julia Child, but sometimes it's important not to get what you wished for.
