People will risk their hides for la buche (boo-sh) de Noel, fashion white lies for the buche and even cooperate with their sister or brother in order to escape responsibility for eating the buche.
Buche de Noel is the classic French Yule log, or Christmas cake. This is a heavenly flourless chocolate cake rolled with chocolate- or coffee-flavored whipped cream, sometimes decorated with confectioners' sugar to resemble snow, or, more festively, with meringue or marzipan shapes.
Within our family circle, it is affectionately known as the “buche” and it is the sort of dessert that might appear on the menu for a condemned man’s last supper, leading off before the rib-eye and garlic mashed potatoes.
Sue makes a mean buche, one that rarely lasts beyond Christmas dinner and breakfast the next morning. She has passed the holiday tradition to daughter Katie and her family.
Rather than baking a buche this Christmas, Katie and Hunter ordered one from The French Gourmet in San Diego, which may sound snooty, but isn’t and if you are ever in San Diego, plan to eat lunch or dinner there, pick up some reasonably priced pastry or do all three. It’s a treat.
“Usually, their buche de Noel feeds six to eight people but this one was smaller and perfect for four of us,” Kate said.
Consider it a petite buche. Petite was perfect but there was almost not enough of petite to go around.
“Not enough” because kids like sweets. Sweets and kids go together like salt and pepper, like Subarus and roof racks. Even the kids whose parents say they don't like sweets like them because sweets are fun and wonderful.
“The kids” in this case were 5-year-old Andrew and 3-year-old Lillian, who had finished their dinners and qualified for dessert.
“I went inside to cut two pieces of the buche for them, brought their pieces outside and then went back inside for no more than two minutes,” Katie said. “When we returned the cake was gone.”
The cake was gone. “Gone” was what the cake was supposed to be. Nobody was surprised that it was gone but there was a question about who had made it gone. Andrew claimed not to have eaten a slice because he had been outmaneuvered by Lillian who had eaten both slices.
“I'd like to have a piece,” he said not unreasonably, if one were to buy his story about not having had a piece because Lillian had eaten it.
The story sounded possible but not probable, and Andrew’s father smelled a buche-loving rat.
How could a 3-year-old, enterprising as she might have been, swindle her bigger, stronger and highly motivated older brother out of his rightful piece?
“I'm going to run the tape,” Hunter said.
Yes, the “tape.” Unbeknownst to the kids and their grandparents, Hunter and Katie have a security camera, which, when reviewed, revealed the truth, a truth different from the account spun by the kids.
Not only had each of them had a piece of the cake but Andrew dropped part of his and eaten it off the deck as any sensible child would.
Brother and sister had concocted the story — Lillian taking the blame — in order that her brother could have another piece — his second. I’m not sure what Lillian would have gotten out of the deal except respect for walking the plank for her older brother.
Rather than making it a big deal, the parents laughed, chalked it up to a Christmas story they would remember and then ate the rest of the dessert themselves.
It’s a Christmas story that might bode well for Andrew and Lillian later on should they choose to remember it. The day may come when one could be called on by the other to back up a story that doesn’t have an ounce of truth in it but which, if believed, could save someone from being grounded for the rest of their life.
Katie, with three brothers, and Hunter with two, may have had some experience with such things.
I might be worried if I were their parents. Then again, I might be encouraged. People bond over the buche, and sometimes that bond lasts a lifetime.
January 03, 2021 at 07:41AM
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HERB BENHAM: Don't beat around the buche when it comes to sibling loyalty - The Bakersfield Californian
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Herb
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