How to Make a Bûche de Noël From Scratch

The swirl; the cracks. Any avid watcher of The Great British Bake Off is familiar with the pitfalls of the Swiss roll, aka the roll cake, the yule log, the bûche de Noël. But this impressive-looking dessert — simply a sponge cake filled with whipped cream or jam and rolled up into a spiral — is easier than you think. When decked out with the traditional Christmas adornments, it’s a fitting centerpiece to any dining table calling out for a bit of festive spirit.

In this edition of You Can Do This, we’re walking you through the full recipe for a from-scratch bûche de Noël. Although most yule logs you’ll see in stores now feature chocolate cake, our bûche de Noël takes flavor inspiration from tradition: the cake was likely invented in the mid-1800s in France, featuring vanilla cake, chocolate buttercream filling, and decorative elements designed to amp up the “found this on the forest floor” effect. (If piping out little meringue mushrooms seems too fiddly for you, we’ve also included an option to turn the traditional meringue topping into simple cookies.)

And ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the swirl isn’t perfect, or if the chiffon slightly cracks in baking. This is a cake that’ll make dinner guests swoon.