Yule Log: ultimate Christmas joy. Having rummaged around for several different recipes (I was even toying with Delicious magazine’s salted caramel Yule log) I realised someone had already done the hard work for me, and plumped (AHAHHAAAHAHAHAA, because I ate so much) for Felicity Cloake’s excellent recipe. It’s flourless, so it’s very light, and that means the nutmeg and cinnamon really shine through - perfect Christmas flavours.

A few thoughts:

1. Does everyone else just understand a “Swiss roll tin” to just be a baking tray with grease proof paper? Is there actually a thing called a Swiss roll tin that is, in some key way, different?

2. I used just 100g of chestnut purée, mainly because I happened to find a tin at the back of the cupboard and that’s the size it happened to be. But I’m glad it was - the success of this recipe is how light it is, not sitting at the bottom of your stomach like a true log. So the 250g of chestnut purée recommended may have overwhelmed the flavour somewhat, but that may just be me.

3. I couldn’t make the ganache harden enough to draw bark-lines in it, but once I put the third layer on, I realised the smudges from the spatula gave a pleasing log-like effect instead.

4. I made my friend’s very nice child cry by refusing to give them any of this. KIDS HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOUR.

As ever: cook, eat, enjoy.

(We’d actually eaten half of this before I remembered to take a shot of its innards.)