Yule Log Cake and other Desserts

Finally getting to post about ALL the food we had at Christmas!  I was worried about making things gluten free but now I don't know why.  Everything came out very well!

Desserts were my main concern since this was the first year to make GF desserts for the Holidays.  I need not have worried!  

The crowning glory of the desserts must be my Yule Log.  Sure it didn't look the way I had imagined it in my head but it was really really good!  

I made the cake part using this recipe from About.com.  Looking at the recipe I was surprised to see only 1/3 cup of potato starch and the 1/3 cup of cocoa powder as the dry ingredients.  Weird.  And SIX eggs!  Separated, no less. 

The cake came out perfectly!  I used the parchment paper, greased, and greased the sides of the pan as well.  NO problems at all for the cake to come out of the pan.

The filling was something my daughter and I cooked up and it was really good!  We took Nutella (chocolate hazelnut cream) and melted chocolate chips and mixed in with Cool Whip.  Allow it to cool in the refrigerator and you have an easy mousse, without all that cooking. 

This cake rolled up nicely, with some cracks of course but that's what the icing is all about!  We decided to frost it with chocolate ganache and used Alton Brown's recipe from Food Network.  This was a little too runny to make a good frosting.  Or at least the kind of frosting I needed.  It was good though, of course!

To make the log look more like a log I decided to add thin pieces of chocolate to cover like "bark."  Eh, not sure the look was what I had seen elsewhere but it was tasty.  Tons of chocolate!

Here is the finished result!