Either Way, There'll Be Cake

My kids were home together this week for what we call “second Christmas”—the post-holiday stretch when everyone’s schedules finally align. While planning the dinner menu, they made a request: a Yule log cake.

We used to get one every year from Linda Johnson of Sylvan Falls Mill, a miller and baker who sold at my farmers market. She made a gluten-free version, which mattered because my eldest is celiac. It was always a special treat, the kind of thing that becomes part of your family’s holiday vocabulary without you noticing until it’s gone.

With less than two days before dinner and a full menu to prepare, I told them it seemed really intimidating. I’d never made one. But I said I’d try.

I’ve baked their birthday cakes every single year, all their lives. They describe what they want and I try to make it happen. Some years are triumphs. Some years are laughable catastrophes that we still talk about. But every year there’s cake. This felt like the same deal.

I started with a box of King Arthur’s gluten-free chocolate cake mix—no shame in a good shortcut—but I needed to turn it into something that could roll without shattering. The technique I borrowed from Sally’s Baking Addiction calls for separating eggs, whipping the whites to stiff peaks, and folding everything together for an airy sponge. I added two extra eggs beyond what the box called for and crossed my fingers.

The cake looked great coming out of the oven. I rolled it while hot in a cocoa-dusted towel, let it cool for three hours, and felt cautiously optimistic.

Then I unrolled it.

The cake had split into sections a few inches wide. It had decided to become a kit.

I stood there for a moment, weighing my options. Then I decided to act like nothing was wrong. I spread the whipped cream filling over the pieces, rolled the whole thing back up as tightly as I could manage, wrapped the towel around the outside, and put it in the fridge overnight to think about what it had done.

The next day, when it came time to cut the diagonal branch piece and assemble it on the board for ganache, the log barely held its shape. I worked fast. The ganache went on, I dragged a fork through it for bark texture, and suddenly it looked like an actual Yule log instead of a chocolate-flavored anxiety dream.

The garnishes helped. I’d made sugared cranberries and rosemary the night before—just a simple syrup soak and a tumble in sugar, but they sparkle like little frozen gems. The meringue mushrooms took longer than expected (piping stems and caps separately, baking low and slow, gluing them together with melted chocolate) but they’re the detail that makes the whole thing feel like a forest floor instead of just a frosted cake.

When I brought it to the table, my kids lit up. It held together when sliced—somehow—and they said it reminded them of the Sylvan Falls version while being its own thing. The almond flour base from the market version was different, but this worked.

Linda still sells at another market these days, up in Northeast Georgia. Still using my LocallyGrown software, which makes me unreasonably happy. The web of connections from that market keeps surprising me—people I haven’t seen in years, still linked by the tools we built together.

I’d make this again. Maybe it’ll be a new tradition. Next time might be a perfect specimen, or I might have to pivot to calling it “a decaying log on the forest floor.” Either way, there’ll be cake.