I made a Yule log. Why, you ask? Because cake, whipped cream, chocolate frosting. 

By making all of it look like a dying plant, I make it Paleo. 

I baked a thin chocolate cake. As instructed, I rolled it in a powdered-sugar-coated dish towel to cool. I made a whipped cream filling, with a bit of insty-vanilla pudding thrown in to make it more sturdy. I made a thinnish chocolate frosting. 

I have no photos of these separate pieces because I was covered in muck and desperately cleaning up after myself so the kitchen wouldn’t look like a health hazard. 

So then I unrolled the cake when it was cool. I’m not sure what was supposed to happen. Was it supposed to remain of one piece?

That was not my reality. In fact, the cake fractured. It looked like the surface of a melting glacier, or a sere sandless desert, or the skin on my heels after a long winter. A bunch of crumbling strips of cake. 

But I’m industrious and simple minded. So I blithely spread the whipped cream stuff on the strips and tried to reform the cake strips into a roll. I thought I’d be able to roll it up and strip off the towel easily, like I was making a giant chocolate-cake-whipped-cream sushi roll. But I guess I didn’t sprinkle enough powdered sugar on the towel. I had to work very hard to get the cake separated from the towel. It was a brutal affair. 

But I managed. I cajoled and mauled that cake into a roll. I smashed it all together with my strong, firm hands. Then I slathered it in chocolate frosting. 

I didn’t make enough frosting. I didn’t know the log would be so huge. Still, I did the best I could. I just smeared it on until it was all gone. The ends and the bottom parts near the plate were bare. I figured it just made it more realistic, like a tree rotting in the woods.  I scraped the frosting with a fork to mimic tree bark, and then for authenticity I sprinkled it all with powdered sugar for snow. 

It is a giant pile of smooshed together chocolate cake, pudding-ish whipped cream, and chocolate frosting. 

Kinda pretty: 

Okay, no. That’s just the magic of a distant cheap shot on my phone. Up close and person? It looks like I dropped it:

Not for company.

 But in my mouth, it tastes fine, just fine. Nom nom nom nom.