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The traditional Buche de Noel
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Background
'A Bûche de Noël had its orgin almost 1000 years ago in Europe. It started as a pagan tradition celebrating the winter solstice, but Christians have continued it as a Christmas eve tradition that was thought to bring good luck in the coming year. A family would burn the largest log they could find in their fireplace, using ambers from the prior year's log to help light it. Over the last couple centuries, most people have moved from hearths to furnaces, and consequently, the Yule log has undergone some changes.
'One of the famous stories behind this French dessert is that Napoleon Bonaparte of France issued a proclamation stating houses in Paris to keep their chimneys closed during the winter because of the cool air that caused medical problems. This prohibited Parisians to use their fireplaces. But ingenious French bakers then invented this dessert as a symbolic substitution around which the family could gather for story-telling and other holiday happiness.
'Traditionally a log-shaped dessert made from chocolate-frosted Génoise cake filled with chocolate buttercream, the modern bûche now encompasses everything from expensive designer offerings with rich mousse fillings and coated in a luxurious ganache, to ice-cream cake variations, or elegant, single-serving mini-bûches. Paris patisseries compete annually to feature the most fashionable, creative, and chic buches, often commissioning famous designers and visual artists to create limited edition cakes that can sell for as much as 150 euros.' -- collaged from various sources
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Media
A bunch of French TV personalities discussing and eating buches de noel, 2009
A pageant of homemade buches de noel, 2009
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This year's contestants
Richart
Jérôme Chaucesse/Hotel Crillon
Thiriet
Fauchon
Fauchon
Christian Lacroix/Le Notre
Facettes
Marcolini
Marcolini
LO
Noël Philippe Segond
Dalloyau
Jean-Paul Hevin
Michalak/ Hotel du Plaza Athénée
Féeric de Meert
Alexis Mabille
Dalloyau
Dalloyau
Recettes
L'Astrance
Michalak/ Hotel du Plaza Athénée
Pierre Herme
Angelina
Carl Marletti
Homemade
Le Cadeau
Hotel Ritz
JK Hevin
Jean-Paul Hevin
Dalloyau
Olivier Bajard
Patrick Roger
Affligem
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Past champions
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Pierre Herme
2007
2006
2008
2005
2009
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Lenotre
Givenchy, 2007
Lolita Lempicka, 2005
Philippe Starck, 2006
Kenzo, 2009
Karl Lagerfeld, 2008
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Christophe Michalak
2008
2009
2007
2006
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*
p.s. Hey. ** Syreearmwellion, Hi. I saw the emails, and thanks a lot! I'll open them and put the post together over the weekend. No, you don't need to worry about the self-publishing stigma around here. Several writers who hang out here have issued their own collections, and I have too, and I don't think getting the so-called official stamp of approval by a publishing house is important or telling of anything much at all. So, yeah, thanks, man, and I'll get back to you soon. ** Allesfliesst, Oh, I think you have home internet by now, right? Nice snow. Much nicer than ours, although we're supposedly getting walloped in a day or two, and supposedly is always the rule of thumb when it comes to Paris and snow. Wow, Prinz Eisenherz! It still exists? That place has been in existence forever. They used to carry my Little Caesar Magazine back in the late 70s and early 80s. Nice to know they remember me. ** David Ehrenstein, Excellent sounding party indeed. That Anne Hathaway seems a very cool person. She's a fan of the work of our own Brendan Lott, for instance. 'Mike's Murder' still isn't on DVD? I imagine Jack Larson is doing his best to try to change that. Very cool Malick behind-the-scenes news, and very much appreciated. Hope you're doing good. Apart from wishing John McCain an immediate and extremely painful death, I'm fine, ha ha. ** Pilgarlic, Oh, that's right, about Lavette and Driveby Truckers. What an interesting combo. Well, yeah, about Friedken. It's just curious because in the States it seems like he's considered a total has-been who got lucky a few times by the film establishment whereas here he's considered a major auteur. ** Sypha, Plan is that you'll have the blurb by the time you wake up today. I think so. Sorry, my brain is kind of cooked. ** Stan Czarnecki, Hey. Mm, no, I don't think you'd have much luck here not speaking French unless you could get a gig teaching English, and I have no idea how that works. And you'd need a work permit or visa, I think, and I'm not sure you can even get one without speaking French. You could get a visa to be here and study French, but you wouldn't be able to work at the same time, I don't think. The French are very bureaucratic. So, I don't it's worth just taking the plunge and hoping to find work here unfortunately. Oh, shit, my mind did a flip where Walser and Musil got switched for a second there. Yeah, duh. Other Walser books I really liked are 'The Tanner' and 'Masquerade and Other Stories'. ** Killer Luka, Well, if you can survive until this coming Wednesday, there's some local gore coming your way. ** Nick Hudson, Hey, bud. There was snow, and now there's a scattered, graying crust. I'm good. Novel's a mere few days from completion, I think. That's fantastic news about Vivid Records. Kiddiepunk told me there was a big, label-related news report impending. Congrats to them and to you, man! No problem on the Xmas song. Everyone, please read these words by the mighty Nick Hudson and then do what he says: 'I've made a Christmas song - I've long wanted to write one - I finished it yesterday, and it's properly within the tradition of THOSE classic seventies Christmas colossi - Slade, et al - albeit set in a nuclear bunker and defiantly anti-consumerist. ... is where it can be found.' You want to hear that, guys. Trust me. I will get my ears around it once I finish this p.s. thing a little later. Tarkovsky? Well, he's pretty awesome. I can say that. 'Stalker' is incredible, and I think you'll pretty much love everything else he's made too. Love to you too, man, and it'll be great to talk. ** Thomas Moronic, Hey, T. Lovely snow story there. The sun is turning our little recent batch into mush as I type. ATP should be really good, right? The line-up looked excellent. I read something somewhere that there's going to be some kind of TG tribute act with all-star admirers performing, but I don't how sturdy that news is. Have a blast in any case, and let me know what the highlights and even low lights were. ** Waiting for John, Greetings, Tristam. Accept a DC deep bow while you're here. Hm, that composite looks a little like ... no, wait, it doesn't. I'll print that out and tack it to every other wall in Paris. Others might have keener eyes. Everyone, Waiting for John aka one of the masters of the universe needs your help. Listen: 'Ok, and this is serious, there's been a police appeal. Please click on the following link and if anyone recognizes the photofit reconstruction do not hesitate to call Little Dick Tracy on the Murder Hotline. Metropolitan Police Murder Appeal.' Help out a bro, folks. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, man, that's terrible: you being stuck in there and held hostage by stuff that should just be white and fluffy. I don't know how weather patterns work over here in the EU/UK, but our sky went deep blue this morning, so maybe it's heading your way? A Santa's Grotto? As you can surely tell by today's post, that's music to my ears. Nice flyer. Everyone, Santa's Grotto + Yuck 'n Yum = nice flyer. Who drew that snowman? It's cool. ** Steevee, Hey. 'Movie Movie' sounds really familiar, hm. Oh, do you like Shabbazz Palaces? I just read this article about them in The Wire, and it greatly intrigued me, so I listened to some of their stuff, and I can't say I get what's so interesting about them. Do you know their stuff? Any thoughts? ** Shannon, Hey. Yeah, I don't know, I'd be totally into reading that horror story if it's easy to dig out and if it still looks worth sharing to you. Oh, rejections and all that, ugh. People's disinterest in and fear of the new and unknown and non-officially introduced is such a problem and so troublesome. Don't take that scatter of highly individual wrong opinions too much to heart. End of the year is weird, no? The artificial deadline. I guess surges of energy and focus are good, though. I'll see if I can mussy up one of those lampshades for you. It is France here, after all. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, A yummy read of and response to Trees' synthpunk post. If only everyone was you. What a world it would be. You can't know that because you're you, but trust me. Why is ice such a double-edged sword? I guess that's what makes it so special and everything, but still. Don't break. ** Statictick, Dude, I saw the fancy arm thing when I was on Facebook for a minute last night. I got lucky on my timing re: my news feed. That thing is intense. Death Metal meet Walter Mitty or something. Crazy. ** John, Hey, wait, weren't you ... ? Oh, never mind. ** Misanthrope, Intense about that nice kid turned angriest kid. Maybe it was just you. Maybe he was still the nicest kid in the world, but whenever you saw you, he went ballistic. Like Billy Jack. Hang in there, man. Don't let a little chunk of whatever teeth are made of defeat you. Which tooth is it, by the way? ** Andrew, If it was just television, I think my blog could compete, But if you throw fabric in there too, whoa. I surrender. ** Josh Feola, Wow, hi, Josh! This is a rare pleasure. How the heck are you? What's going on? ** Creative Massacre, Oh, cool that the intros are okay. Thanks. That's a nice job your girlfriend's got there. Especially in this climate. If you love those artists, you'd love Paris. There's lots and lots of their work here. My favorite artists? Wow, hm. Historically, I think I'd have to go with Vermeer, Duchamp, Manet, ... I'm blanking. Most of favorites are relatively contemporary, I guess. Charles Ray, Paul Thek, Tony Smith, Vincent Fecteau, Richard Hawkins, Torbjorn Vejvi, Mike Kelley, Bill Henson, ... hm, lots, I guess. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, I'm sorry to hear you're feeling a little sick. I hope it's a quick fly-by kind of thing. Actually, I don't think the music that the Emos in my novel listen to is ever mentioned specifically. I had a bunch of band names in the early drafts, but I cut them because, well, I love to cut things that don't have to be there. So, I guess readers have to imagine their music tastes. I loved the phone conversation with your friend. It made me guffaw, but it was delicate too. You're so good with details. That paperclip became a kind of Lynchian paperclip by the time you guys hung up. My day: 80-90% of it involved novel work. I finished the second chapter, and now I'm doing the third. I'm try to finish one chapter per day. This third one might take longer because the writing in gets really dense and more difficult on purpose, so it's a little slower to get right. For the record, the narrator has just arrived at Die!!Die!!Color!!!, which is the name of the annual manga/ anime/ Japan Expo in Paris -- only in my novel, of course -- with his brother Alfonse, whose birthday is 'today' -- and the narrator, who has a psychological allergy to excessive visual stimuli, is freaking out. So, anyway, I worked all day and into the evening, which kind of took care of my day. I did call Oscar and Kiddiepunk to see if they wanted to go see the Harry Potter movie, but neither one of them was home. I thought about paying my rent, but I didn't. Yury got home from work and then went off to swim in the pool at Les Halles. I watched part of a TV documentary about the late, kind of controversial French author Romain Gary. That was kind of interesting. Uh, ate, smoked, showered. I think that's it. It was another work day, basically, but hopefully there won't very many more of those before I can spend parts of my days galavanting about. How was Friday? ** Frank Jaffe, Hey, Frank! Oh, 'Phenomena', yeah. That's a good one. Man, good luck with the finals. You don't sound particularly worried about them. I have the Fellini Satyricon soundtrack on vinyl back in my LA pad. It's fantastic. One of the best soundtracks ever, I think. Nino Rota was kind of a genius. Very cool. I haven't seen any movies lately. My novel has eaten everything. But that'll change soon. And the moody film you gave me is at the top of the waiting heap. ** Trees, It went good, no? The post and the talkfest, I mean. Thank you again, man. Any news on that shack? Sorry, it got me excited. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. It sure is freezing here, I'll tell you that. What are you working on? Did the Curran collab figure itself out? ** Squeaky, Hey, D. Oh, the Art Institute, cool, great. Will you still be there in early February? I'll be there, briefly anyway, and it would be great to see you. The video project sounds ultra-enticing, of course. Did you write it? ** Changeling, Hey. Cool and awesome about the AC post. You rule. Oh, that sneaking up on someone else's novel fake-out tactic is a very good way to work. I kind of do that all the time, or I try to psych myself into thinking that way. Good move, man. Well, if he's not your muse, he certainly sounds, you know, useful. That sounds rude. Don't mean it that way. But it does seem like he needs to get into the idea of the glory that comes with being the concubine of a writer. Or maybe not. I don't know. I'm the writer half of that equation, so what do I know. Anyway, learning how to growl properly will pay off in dividends throughout your whole life. It's a good skill to have. Or so people who seem to know about such things like to claim. ** Okay, I'll go back to work. What was the post today again? Oh, right, Buche de Noel, the dessert fit for and usually only affordable to kings. And me. I'm going to eat two of those buches up there. Blah blah, see you tomorrow.
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