“My favorite thing to say on camera is oh, this is a fun thing to do with kids. And I’ve never once baked with kids in any of my videos or really in real life at all.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “Hi, everyone. I’m Claire Saffitz. I’m in the NYT cooking studio because it’s Cookie Week. And I’m going to show you my contribution to the Cookie Week lineup. It’s my Buche de Noel cookies. So Buche de Noel, meaning holiday log in French — we call them yule log here. It is basically a rolled cake that is meant to look like a decomposing log. Making an actual Buche de Noel is extremely festive and in the holiday spirit, but is also a huge pain. So I’m turning it into cookie form, which you can make a lot of them at once. I do tend to rely on cookies that are freezable. So I like cookies where you can make a whole bunch of them at once and they’re easy to portion. And then you can freeze them and bake them off as you need. Freezer cookies are like cookies on demand. It’s a lot easier, simpler. And you get all the kind of deliciousness and all the cuteness that you want. And then you can gift them versus one big Buche de Noel. So the first thing I’m going to do is make the coating. This recipe uses a food processor. You use it to make the coating and the dough. So my thing is if you’re going to get your food processor dirty and have to wash all the parts, you might as well use it as much as you can. So this is a chocolate-flavored cookie. And cacao nibs are the actual cacao plant. So they taste like chocolate. But they are not sweetened at all. So they’re really bitter. Demerara sugar then a nice pinch of salt to season everything. So we’re going to grind this until it looks like very coarse sand. This is both textural and it’s going to add a little sweetness and crunch. But it’s also part of the look of the cookie. O.K. This looks good. So I still have some slightly larger pieces of cacao nibs, but nothing bigger than a piece of bulgur wheat. I don’t if that’s descriptive for everyone. But I’m going to transfer this out of the bowl. And now, no need to clean out the bowl of the food processor. But we’re going to now use this exact same food processor to make the dough. So I’m going to start by combining my dry ingredients. I’m using all-purpose flour. You’ll need a little bit of additional flour, FYI, for rolling out the dough. My flour measuring tip is to always decant your flour into a separate container. Don’t leave it in the five-pound bag or whatever bag you buy it in. Because it gets really compacted. So I like to then scoop with a big spoon. And then something that my mom always did, which I just do out of habit because of watching her is I chop it up a little bit. And that’s kind of just to see if there’s any big air pockets. And then level. So that’s just to ensure that you don’t have too compact a cup and end up adding more flour to the recipe than you really want to. Actually, same thing with powdered sugar. I do like to put it into a different container. Also, it’s such a pain to measure from the bag. It goes everywhere. O.K., the next ingredient — 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder. So it’s not a very intensely chocolatey dough, mostly because I want the color to be a little bit more of a pale brown because I want contrast between the dough and the filling. That said, cocoa powder is a very strong ingredient. And a little bit goes a long way. So I have two kinds of cocoa powder here. You’ll often see in a recipe that calls for Dutched or Dutch-processed cocoa. So natural raw cocoa powder is super acidic. And when it’s Dutched or Dutch-processed, it is neutralized with an alkalizing agent. And it tends to give it a more round, roasted, deeper chocolatey flavor and neutralizes some the more fruity tones. Because it changes the acidity, it means it does change the way it can interact with other ingredients, like chemical leaveners, in the recipe. But the point is sometimes, it matters. And sometimes, it doesn’t. Here, it doesn’t matter. So I’m just going to use the natural cocoa powder. So — oh, then salt, a 1/2 a teaspoon of kosher salt. Any time I’m making any chocolate recipe, I always add a good amount of salt. Because it really does bring out the flavor. So I’m just going to pulse this to combine. It’s really easy when you’re adding cocoa powder because you can see when it’s combined. O.K. So this is 12 tablespoons, or a stick and a half of unsalted butter. You can see, it’s cubed up and it’s cold. It’s going to make a cold dough. And that’s going to be easier to work with. And it’s going to cool down faster in the fridge. Because we want to roll out a chilled dough. And I want to pulse it until the butter has not totally disappeared into the dough, so finer than you would go if you were making pie dough. O.K. So this is what it looks like. There’s still some bits of butter. Here’s a little piece. But you want the butter to be really well broken down into the dough. Now, I’m going to add my liquid ingredients. The sour cream gives it just a little bit of tang. And it’s also tenderizing. If you don’t have sour cream, because it’s only 2 tablespoons, so you can use Greek yogurt. The egg is really useful in this dough because it does enrich it. But it also is like a good binder. It helps to keep the dough together. And then 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. So I just want to whisk this together. So once that’s smooth, we’re going to add it to the dough. And it’s just going to go until the whole thing forms a ball of dough around the blade. You’ll see, it’s going to hydrate and turn into this chocolaty dough. All right. So now, I’m done with the food processor. And we have our dough. Here it is. You see, it’s not a very dark color. It’s a pale-ish moderate cocoa color. It’s a nice stiff dough. It’s not sticky at all, makes it really easy to work with. Now, I want to divide this into three equal portions. Of course, you could eyeball this. But just for the sake of the final cookies and how they look, it’s better to weigh so you know you’re being precise. So I’m just going to — got 211, 230, 232. Close enough. O.K. So somewhere in that 230 range, maybe a little more. So I take each portion. And again, it’s super easy to work with. You shouldn’t really need any flour on the work surface. And I just start by rolling it out into a 9-inch-long log. I would say that I use a ruler in the kitchen pretty often. I understand people that would think that feels excessively fussy. But it really is helpful. So just always good to have a $0.50 plastic ruler in your crock of kitchen utensils. So now, we’re going to wrap them in plastic. And then you’re just going to use your hands. And I’m just going to flatten it into the makings of a rectangle. One thing that I always think about is the shape that the dough is in when it goes into the fridge is the shape that it’s going to want to be when you take it out and roll it. So now that I have this shape, I’m going to use the plastic to wrap it. So you can see, I’m pressing out the air. And now, I have this little packet. I’m going to turn it over. So I take the rolling pin. And I just like to go over the dough lengthwise and crosswise. And this helps to not only even out the thickness, but it also helps to force the dough into all the edges and corners so that I’m making a really neat packet. This is going to make your life so much easier when it comes to rolling out the dough. Because you’re already starting from this really nice rectangular shape. So these should chill for at least one hour in the fridge. While the dough is chilling is the perfect time to make our chocolate filling. So the filling is a straight chocolate filling. Really, the base is melted chocolate. So it does give a very chocolatey, silky texture to the inside of the cookie. So I’m going to do this over a double boiler, which is my preferred method for melting chocolate. The idea is that basically, you have a lower piece that has a little bit of simmering water in it. So I’m going to turn this on. I have about an inch of water in the bottom of the saucepan. And then you set a heatproof bowl over top. So that’s what a double boiler is. And it’s just a very gentle way to warm or heat or melt things. Semi-sweet chocolate anywhere in the 60 percent to 70 percent cacao range, I think, is really nice. Then I have 6 tablespoons of unsalted butter. And I just want to let all that melt together. And then it has one yolk in it. And then I’m reserving the white. That’s really important. Because I do end up using that later. I do really appreciate recipes where I’m not left with random yolks or random egg whites at the end. So the yolk, it’s helping to stabilize the filling in a way that it’s not going to leak out. So this is basically melted. I have the tiniest little bit of butter left. I am going to leave the saucepan right there with the water in it. There’s a chance that I might need to rewarm the filling ever so slightly to make it spreadable. Because it will thicken as it sits. So it just depends on the temperature of your kitchen and how fast you’re working. I am sweetening it a little bit. I’m using powdered sugar, again, for that reason that it dissolves really instantly. Then I’m going to add a tablespoon of flour. It’s also just there to fix everything and make sure that it sets as it bakes. So you can see, it starts out very, very fluid. And that’s mostly, actually, on account of the butter. And so we just want to let this sit until the mixture thickens. It’s going to thicken as it cools. You can see, it’s already starting to thicken up a little bit. So this has actually been in the fridge overnight. You can see, it’s nice and firm. I have a piece of parchment paper here. This is what I’m going to use to roll out the dough. So I’m going to start by giving it a little bit of flour right on your parchment paper and then a little extra flour on top. I’m going to start by rolling this out with anything that I’m rolling. I like to always give the dough some movement. So after several passes with the rolling pin, I like to lift it up, make sure it’s not sticking too badly. You can always give it a little more flour to prevent sticking. Now, this is a really forgiving, nice dough. So you shouldn’t have a lot of issues with sticking. Even though we’re going to trim it, you do want to take care to make the edges as straight as even as possible. The parchment is really great to have because you can see how I’m turning it to help me achieve the size that I want. It’s a decent rectangle. But I am going to trim it to make really neat sides. So you can see that I’m actually just eyeballing the straightening. You can use your ruler if you need to. This is what the filling looks like once it’s cooled. I overshot it a little bit. So now, it can just sit over here in a slightly warm spot. But it’s still spreadable. So I’m going to measure about 1/3 of a cup. This is why you don’t want it so liquid. It’s like, this is going to be much easier to contain and work over the dough. So I’m just kind of distributing the filling. It’s a fun dough to work with. It’s a fun filling to work with. This is a very satisfying motion to spread it over this rectangle. So then, using my offset spatula, I’m going to work the filling into an even layer. I just want to leave a small border on the long end that’s further away from me. And then everywhere else, you can go right to the edges. So now, I’m going to roll this up. And it’s the same way that you would roll if you were making cinnamon rolls. So I’m going to start at the long end with full filling coverage. And I like to start with my thumb and forefinger to just get the dough going. And this is where I like to try to make it as tight as possible. Because I don’t want a spiral that has a hole in the middle. It’s not sticking to the parchment. So it’s really easy to do this part. And the whole idea here is that I’m getting a really thin, long spiral. And that’s because I want them to have the kind of dimensions of Buche de Noel, which is long and skinny. So then you get to the end that had no filling. And that’s where you’re going to just let it rest on that seam. So here, you have the first piece of dough all filled, ready to go. It’s not so soft. It’s not going to lose its shape if you handle it a little bit. And this can just hang out here. And now, I’m going to repeat that exact same process with the remaining portions of dough. O.K.? Can I do that? O.K.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “You want to just chill them until the dough is firm again. And that’s going to take 20 to 25 minutes. So you can see, from that nice brief chill, that they’re nice and firm. Now, I have that cacao nib and demerara sugar coating. This part’s fun. You can just spread this right over that same baking sheet. Beat the egg white a little bit with a fork. And that’s mostly because, when you have an egg white, how it holds together like that, you want to just liquefy it a little bit. I just want to break it up. I have a pastry brush here. So I’m just using my pastry brush, starting with one of the logs, giving it a really thin but even coating. So now, this is going to go onto the baking sheet. And this part’s really fun. You’re just going to roll it and toss the filling over the log until it’s fully coated. Does this look like a tree branch that then we can cut and have it look like Buche de Noel? Hopefully. If you had a lot of excess flour from rolling, go ahead and brush it off before this step. Because you don’t really want that flour to mix with the egg white. You should have plenty of coating to get through all three logs, plus probably a little bit left over. And now, we’re very close. I realize, we’re getting up there in number of steps. There’s one final step, which is a quick freeze, just until the dough is very, very firm to the touch. So it’s 10 to 15 minutes. It’s not that long. O.K. So now, we’re finally ready to slice and bake the Buche de Noel cookies. This makes 36 cookies, which is quite a few. But because, as I was saying, the dough really holds its shape, you can actually get away with baking all of them on one cookie sheet, which is great. So I have a half-sheet pan here with a piece of parchment paper. I’m going to slice them one log at a time. And the first thing is to actually just trim off the ends. And you can see how nice that spiral looks. So you’re just cutting to expose the ends. This is actually weirdly the part where you don’t need a ruler. Because I’m just going to eyeball it. But I’m going to start by cutting the log in half. And then I’m going to cut each half into three pieces, into thirds. And you can see, the dough is very firm. So now, I have my six equal pieces. Now, I’m going to cut each piece in half again. But this time, I’m going to angle the knife at a 45-degree angle. So you’re going to start to one side of the piece and cut downwards like that. Then they’re going to rest on the rounded, coated side. But you want the spirals exposed. So you want the flat side on one end and the cut angled end facing up on the other. And I’m going to repeat that process.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “You can see, after all of that effort, actually how quickly and easily they cut. O.K. So here are all 36 cookies. They’re ready to bake. They will slump a little bit. But they’re not going to spread. And they’re going to bake until the dough is a little bit puffed. And it’s going to feel firm to the touch. So 20 to 25 minutes. So here they are. I love that when they come out of the oven, you get even more of a sense of the color contrast and the spiral, so that darker filling and then the lighter dough. They look great. And they smell so good. So now, these just have to cool. You can transfer them to a cooling rack to speed it along. I mentioned at the top about freezing after the coating and the slicing and the angle and everything. Once you have those formed cookies, that’s actually the perfect time to freeze them solid. So you can see how I arranged them on the baking sheet. Instead of putting them in the oven, put them in the freezer. Wait until they’re frozen solid. And then you can gently pack them into a container. And then you can bake them on demand. Now, in terms of storage tips for the baked cookies, once these are fully cooled, they store really well. So just store in an airtight container at room temp. They’re really great for gifting because you can pack them in a tin.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “So after all that work, at least you have 36 cookies, which is quite a lot. I also think they’re the perfect three-bite cookie. I’m going to taste. Mm, very delicate. The dough is so tender. And I love the crunch on the outside. It’s still not too sweet, nice and chocolatey. There’s something very festive about it, which I really love. Mm. My advice for the holidays — get more flour, sugar, and butter, and eggs than you think you’ll need. Use your freezer. Your freezer is your friend — frozen cookie dough, frozen butter. Take what you think you want to do for the holidays and cut it in half. And then actually do that amount. And then you’ll be so happy because it’s like, you won’t have been overly ambitious. And then maybe you’ll enjoy yourself, which is always important for the holidays. I will say, with holiday cookies, it is a balancing act between the visuals, the look, the aesthetic of the cookie and the taste. But I think this one really does both. So if you want to try this recipe or any of the other cookies from Cookie Week, you can find all the recipes on NYT Cooking. Oh my gosh, so beautiful. Oh my gosh, this is so nice. No one ever really gives me cookies. This is so exciting. Oh, my gosh. Look, so pretty. So excited. Thank you guys so much for making these.”
