How about a gluten free Buche de Noel, or Yule Log?
This is a French tradition, and for those people who aren’t really into dense fruit cakes – the traditional English Christmas Cake – an ideal alternative. These are chocolate flavour, but often include intense chestnut flavours too.
Do go over to Tastespotting, to see a selection of beautiful photos of Buches de Noel.
Here’s a recipe from Dietary Specials using their gluten free chocolate cake mix, but for people who prefer to cook from scratch, here are some more complex recipes:
- Gastronomers Guide offers a walnut flour/chestnut version
- Lilac Kitchen – chocolate and cinnamon
- La Tartine Gourmande suggests a chocolate and coconut version
- Gluten Free Cooking uses an orangepeel -scented chocolate sponge, with meringue mushrooms
- Living Without suggests chocolate and chestnut with hazelnut – very seasonal
But I think this, from Gluten a Go Go, has got to be the winner: do go and admire – it is beautiful, chestnut and chocolate with marzipan mushrooms.
Look how many classic Christmas flavours these recipes manage to amass between them: chocolate, chestnut, walnut, hazelnut, oranges and marzipan. Yum… Go on, give it a try; don’t hold back, because the lumpier and bumpier it is, the more it will look like a log. (That’s my kind of cooking).
