I recently listened to an archival broadcast of the Sporkful podcast from 2017 in which the host, Dan Pashman, claims he’s never doing another American Thanksgiving recipe podcast again (at least not for several years). Why keep reinventing a roast turkey recipe when you only need one or two? The more recipes one conjures, the more one places oneself on a “Wheel Of Infinite Thanksgiving Anxiety,” as Pashman put it. After he made his appeal, several famous guest chefs recounted the name and number of recipes they created to keep it new each holiday. When Milk Street’s Christopher Kimball counted the turkey recipes he’d created in the name of the next best Thanksgiving dinner, I imagined his signature bowtie spinning and laughed so hard the dog barked at me. That podcast was both enticing and hysterical.
Then, suddenly, I thought of my beloved Advent Bûche de Noël recipes, all ELEVEN of them:
I do love to inject a bit of novelty into our Advent. And I’ve loved creating a new Yule Log for ELEVEN out of the past THIRTEEN years I’ve been posting here on SSJ (and, before that, on The Lunchbox Season). That’s a top-ten list and a bonus! But I hereby proclaim, “Eleven yule logs is enough.” My work is done in the tree-like cake department. They’re all my babies and they’re all my favourites. And I don’t need to build my catalogue up to a dozen log-cakes, let alone a baker’s dozen.
I have plenty of other “novelties” to introduce during SSJ Advent 2023: handmade items, incredible jars of jam, stretches for body and mind, and endless cookies. But I won’t be coming up with any more recipes in the form of a log cake, or a mini-log cake, or a “stump de noel” or what have you. I might even take a break from making ANY Bûche de Noël AT ALL this Christmas. Though, if I change my mind in a hurry, I have a fabulous list from which to pull – ELEVEN classics I can make on rotation for the next several decades.
What’s your Advent hobby-horse?
SSJ Advent 2023 officially starts on November 30 with SSJ’s Iconic Advent Love-to-do List. But stay tuned here on SSJ for my annual One of a Kind Show shopping guide [posting on the evening of November 23rd] as well as some epic SSJ Best-of Lists soon after, to get you in the mood.
Kerry says
This is hugely controversial!!! (And well done you, for doing what feels right.)
Roseanne Carrara says
Thanks so much, Kerry! We’ll see if it feels right on Christmas Eve 🙂 But so far, so great!