As you may have noticed from my last post, I’m not the quickest to jump on a trend bandwagon. I saw brownie yule logs all over Instagram last year (or maybe it was 2022?) but I finally wanted to give it a try this year.
I purchased the Finch Bakery Yule Log instructions / recipe (well worth the £3) and gave it a go a few weekends back.
The first attempt I went with was the chocolate brownie Yule Log, that I filled with biscoff and milk chocolate. I followed the Finch Bakery recipe and instructions, and was amazed that things went well & the roll turned out brilliantly. Genuinely expected it to go far worse for my first attempt!
The above image shows some of the steps involved.
– Baked the brownie and allowed it to cool fully, before mixing it in my stand mixer.
– Lined my sheet tin with cling film, and pressed the brownie into it
– Allowed that to set again, then added the filling – in this case a mixture of Biscoff and oreo crumbs.
– I then rolled the log, using the clingfilm to help hold it in place.
I wrapped the log and allowed it to fully chill before coating with melted chocolate. I used milk chocolate for the outside of this one, and added some fondant toppers.
Feeling confident after attempt 1, I decided to try a Blondie Roll with PB filling. I used a different recipe to the one on the Finch Bakery sheet, which is a blondie I had successfully made before.
Things seemed OK at first, until it came time to roll the log, and the blondie just crumbled into a sand!
At first I thought about giving up on this one and using the crumbs for some truffles, but I saved it by adding more “wet” ingredients to the mixture to get it to a rollable consistency (basically oil & peanut butter!)
This time around, it went a lot better but was VERY THICK thanks to the extra ingredients. No-one would complain to that though!
I coated this log in blonde chocolate mixed with raspberry powder to give it more of a PB&J vibe.
Undetered from the issues with the PB roll, I decided to try a peppermint bark one. The brownie layer was fine, but my white chocolate ganache filling was too wet and I had to scrapre it off and re-do it before rolling. You couldn’t tell though – and this one was my favourite (taste wise):
At the end of all this, I decided to try one more roll… this time feeling inspired by the cornflake rolls I have seen posted by Georges Bakery. My friend got me his “Rebel Bakes” book earlier this year for my birthday, so I decided to try making the caramel cornflake recipe to use in a roll.
Take 1: Making the caramel from scratch & I managed to burn the sugar. I binned it and tried again.
Take 2: This time, my sugar wouldn’t melt & I ended up having to bin that batch too.
Take 3: I decided to deviate from the Rebel Bakes book and instead try making a “wet” recipe. This went to pot too – the sugar was not browning and the mixture just looked like a wet fudge. Rather than waste even more ingredients, I ended up combining that with chocolate and marshmallows to form a decadent cornflake cake.
To add to my annoyance, I couldn’t get the cornflake mix to “roll” without breaking so I ended up just squeezing it into one big log & coating with a mix of white and dark chocolate.
In spite of this one annoying me the most, it was the best tasting cornflake roll – so at least that part went well!
I ended up slicing the logs last week. I boxed some up for friends (alongside the cookie pie slices) and then took the rest to work with me.
