Stump de Noel Cake Pan

A Bûche de Noël is a cake that is traditionally served around Christmas. It’s a roulade – or jelly roll – type cake – that is frosted with chocolate frosting or ganache and decorated to look like a yule log, complete with meringue marshmallows. They’re fun cakes to prepare and, with all that chocolate and the rather elaborate presentation, they’re always a hit when they’re served. The drawback is that they’re time consuming, so fewer people tend to take the time to make then during the holidays. One solution to this is to make the cake itself easier, so instead of using a roulade cake to make a yule log, you can use a bundt pan to make a holiday stump.

It sounds silly to say it aloud, but the Stump de Noël Bundt Cake Pan really does make a very attractive cake. It’s a standard bundt pan that is shaped like the stump of a tree, complete with roots and lines that look like bark. It’s made by Nordicware of heavy duty cast aluminum and it has a nonstick interior. You can decorate your holiday stump just as you would a traditional bûche de Noël, with chocolate and meringue mushrooms, and it still makes a dramatic statement on the dessert table.

This pan can also be surprisingly good for other holiday occasions, as well. Adding a little green-tinted frosting as grass around the base and decorating the cake with flowers will give you a lovely spring cake, and placing some Easter Eggs inside the stump makes it a festive option for Easter. For fall celebrations, some yellow, gold and red “leaves” made from chocolate or even piped on with icing can produce a beautiful result.