Less Sinful Chocolate Yule Log or Swss Roll

As a lot of people – myself included – are on a health kick this month, I thought I’d share a recipe for a slightly less sinful chocolate yule log I made to take to a friend’s house at Christmas. It comes from Lorraine Pascale’s book ‘A lighter way to bake’ and the recipe can be found here.

 

I didn’t feel the need to use the milk in the chocolate ganache; it would have thinned it quite a lot and I was worried it wouldn’t set, though in fact I also forgot to put the icing sugar into the ganache. So mine was just made of chocolate and low far cream cheese, which did taste really nice – like Chocolate Philadelphia if you’ve had that!

Mixing the dry ingredients for the cake

 

Adding the wet ingredients

Spread onto a Swiss roll tin

Just out of the oven

Spreading the ganache on top

Rolled up and covered with more ganache

I didn’t decorate the yule log as I made it the day before I needed to take it to my friend’s and was worried about any decorations going too soft or sinking in, as Lorraine’s recipe says to serve immediately. But I kept it in the fridge overnight and it was really good even if the presentation doesn't look all that great (it's rustic!).

 

The coffee in the cake is detectable but not overpowering and it was nice to feel that this dessert wasn’t as calorific as a traditional yule log!

I'm sharing this with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I run with Ros of the More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter I have chosen this month is Y. Strictly speaking this is a Yule log though you could serve it as a Swiss roll any time of year.

I'm also sending this to Love Cake, hosted by JibberJabber UK as her theme, 'a month of cake' will accept any cake entries.