Buche de Noël (Yule Log)

Coconut cream filling with added goodness; premium chocolate sponge cake; double-chocolate frosting with bonus. 

And candied cranberries.

Decadence without flour.

What's not to like?

Recipes for the cake elements posted in partes tres. 

In this cake, I used just over 2 cups coconut cream, and added to the whipped coconut cream for filling, in these amounts:

1 Tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon powdered vanilla

1 teaspoon cocoa powder

3 Tablespoons orange liqueur

I topped the cake with a sprinkling of ultrafine granulated sugar for the snow, and tossed in a few candied cranberries...the flavor combination of the orangey chocolatey cake and the sweet-tart berries is amazing!

Update, December 2014: this year, I traded up, for the filling. I went from a simple whipped coconut cream to a white chocolate/coconut cream/orange liqueur mousse. It held its form better in the center of the cake, and ended up with a not-too-sweet, well-balanced finish.

The rest of the process remained the same.

It was still a big hit.

Lazy Vegan's Lemon Sherbet

Many of my friends and I are a bit on the lactose intolerant side, and with other allergies, to boot.  Several other friends are vegans or vegetarians.  This  does, on occasion, make cooking for the gang a bit challenging.  However, I did find a dessert everybody seems to be happy with – including the lazy chef!

Technically, it's neither sherbet nor sorbet nor ice cream nor gelato... well, it comes close to a gelato, if you go by the literal translation, which simply means "frozen".  But there's no egg, no milk, no cream, no fuss.  There is only a half a large can of frozen lemonade mix and two cans of coconut milk.  That's it.  No more.

I made a couple of batches of this yesterday, with the help of my ten-year-old friend, and she agreed it was not only easy, but tasty as heck.  Fair warning, though, coconut milk is not cheap. Two batches means two cans, currently at $3.98 apiece, so the double batch I made ended up being about $16 per half gallon.  Still, it's worth it, once in a while.

The sherbet goes like this:

Lazy Vegan's Lemon Sherbet

Ingredients:

2 cans (approx. 14 ounces each) fine quality coconut milk

1 cup frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed

Directions: 

Shake cans of coconut milk thoroughly before opening.  In a medium bowl, whisk together all ingredients.  Allow to chill in refrigerator about 15 minutes.  Pour into ice cream freezer, chill as your freezer directs, until the consistency of a very thick milkshake.  Put into its own container, place in deepfreeze.

See, now, wasn't that easy?

If you don't have an ice cream freezer, you can put it into the deepfreeze, then, every 15 minutes to half hour, take it out, stir it, until it becomes too thick to stir, then store until serving.

If it has been freezing longer than an hour or two, you will need to allow it to sit out for about 15 minutes before trying to serve, unless you cheat.*

* For the adult version, I like adding a couple tablespoons of light rum.  It doesn't make much of a difference in the flavor, but it does make it a little bit of soft-serve consistency.