I’ve been wanting to make one of those yule log cake thingies since I had my first child. She’s 14 now, so this is the longest stint of procrastination for me on record.

The things is, the idea of rolling a cake terrified me. It still kind of does. I don’t know why. I’m a pretty touch cookie. Blood and guts don’t bother me. I usually laugh during horror films, but rolling a CAKE! That’s madness!!

This year I started out with my usual line: I’ve been wanting to make a Yule log cake for years, but I don’t have time. Maybe next year.

Then something even more horrific than rolling a cake happened, my annual fruitcake flopped. Everything was going so well. I love my recipe, but I got rushed and pulled it out too soon and although it was mostly cooked, it fell apart. It was still delicious, my husband devoured it, but I was planning to take it to a party and serving people handfuls of broken cake bits just didn’t seem right. I’m a heathen, but I still have standards!

So… I decided I might as well roll a cake. I had watched my delicious fruitcake, my beautiful cake transform into a monster. I had nothing left to lose.

I decided to just do a classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Chocolate on chocolate would be too rich for my famous chocolate buttercream icing.

I had learned during trivia at a Christmas party I attended earlier that week that these Yule log cakes originated in England and were called Blocks in their homeland.

I would soon learn why.

After reading up on rolling a cake I found that the recipe itself wasn’t hard, it was just the steps. So I lined a cookie sheet with wax paper and after sifting the flour and beating the eggs until they beat me, I had the perfect batter to pour.

I’d never baked a cake on a cookie sheet, but I have baked plenty of cookies in a cake pan so this part made some sense.

A colleague of mine, who used to own her own bakery, told me to use a LOT of powdered sugar during the next step, which is to flip the cake onto a tea towel (I used a dish cloth–whatever), and immediately roll it up to let it cool, while it was rolled!

This is what got me, rolling a hot cake, to let it completely cook and unroll it. Wouldn’t it crumble and crack? Wouldn’t it scream in pain? I didn’t know how it would go, so I set to work, not realizing that I should have probably sprinkled the powdered sugar directly onto the cake and not the towel… it stuck a bit when the unrolling time came.

But rolled, it was and I worked on my frosting while it cooled.

Everything said to let it cool completely. This was estimated to take about an hour. I don’t know what kind of clock liars they are but it was over two hours before this cake wasn’t warm.

And when I unrolled it, it cracked all over the place. It looked like a cake corpse, crying to be put out of its misery.

I’m guessing I didn’t need to let it cool entirely, but maybe just until mostly cooled and not too warm. But I refused to give up. I know the best way to bring a dying cake back to life is to ice the crap out of it.

Now most recipes have some weird marshmallow goo to put inside, but since I did a yellow cake I figured chocolate buttercream would be good inside and out.

Things were starting to look edible!

But the next step was the most harrowing. I had to roll this iced cake pan cake back up. I shrieked and squealed the entire time. The kids were concerned…

Icing started to seep through. Would it fall apart? Had I failed AGAIN?! I couldn’t stand it. Not another dead cake. It must live. LIVE. So I kept rolling and rolling until:

I had my block.

It was heavy and solid and still together. And I realized why the English had originally called the damn thing a block. I could’ve used it as a weapon if an intruder broke in. No amount of sifting and bubbling this thing up could keep it from being a chunky monkey.

Now I knew I was okay. I iced the outside and used a fork to make it look like wood grain and voila!

We ate the sweet Yule Log for our Yule celebration and felt warm and cozy as winter moved in!

Blessed Yule! pic.twitter.com/lqtfltWJC7

— Jessica Marie Baumgartner (@jessmbaum) December 21, 2024

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My husband loved it so much, he had it for breakfast too.