Gluten free Christmas Bûches

Bûche, oh my bûche, tell me who is the most beautiful!

Christmas is on his way, the wind is getting chilly, the sky is clear blue, people are gathering inside coffee shops holding hot mugs in their hands to warm up after a cold walk in the city, and in Paris, we are starting to see Bûches de Noël popping up in pastry shopping windows!

As a foreigner, I look at this beautiful and typical French Christmas pastry with the eyes of a child: every year pastry chefs all over France are proposing new flavours, different consistencies in a full parade of colours and shapes that let me enchanted and with my mouth wide open…

Luckily there are also gluten free ones that I can eat and today I happy to tell you about the ones I tasted and liked at Sitron, Maison Foucade, Un dimanche à Paris and Biosphère Café.

Here there are my sweet memories topped with puffy cream and pinky sugar!

I have already told you about Sitron, the new 100% gluten free pastry shop that opened in Paris one month ago.

Laure Bouvet, founder, and Sébastien Lenglet, pastry chef, are proposing exquisite pastries and their new bûches are delicious too.

They have created three bûches this year that are also available in small size, such a great idea, I think! You can actually taste yours before choosing the flavour.

Let’s start our journey and go far away to exotic countries where we find the bûche “Brasilia”: biscuit with almonds, puffy rice soaked in passion fruit juice, cream with fresh mango, chantilly with vanilla from Madagascar, glaçage with passion fruit. Then let’s stop at the “Caraïba”: chocolate biscuit, croustillant praliné, French sablé breton, cream with smoked tonka bean, dark chocolate mousse, glaçage with chocolate and hazelnuts. To pay homage to Laure and her home country, la Normandie, Sébastien has imagined the bûche “Normande”: wallnuts biscuit, green apple compote, green apple chocolate éclats, baked apples, creamy mousse with vanilla from Madagascar, gelée of green apples.

Such a treat!

Maison Foucade proposes two bûches that are also lactose-free:

• The bûche with raw cocoa and pear infused with Canada “sapin”
• The bûche with exotic coconut, mandarine, passion fruit and mango.

I tasted both of them with my friend Audrey from the blog Fichty and we both liked them a lot.

The consistency was perfect, so creamy, we also liked how the fruits married beautifully with the cream, they kind of make this cake lighter and more fresh, something that can be very pleasant to feel at the end of a Christmas meal which is usually jam packed with food 😉

As I am a big fan of chocolate, my favourite would be the raw cocoa bûche, especially because the quality of the chocolate selected by Maison Foucade is incredibly good.

I also liked the classic Pain d’épice and the Foucardises, delicious and cutie Christmas cookies!

Un Dimanche à Paris, the elegant pastry shop created by Pierre Cluizel at the heart of beautiful Saint-Germain-des-Près, proposes three bûches that are all gluten free this year, how great is that!

The pastry chef Nicolas Bacheyre, who won the “Meilleur espoir pâtissier 2016” award, has imaged three Christmas desserts that are beautiful to see and good to eat:

• The “Créative” made of three snow-white cushions that hide pure 72% dark chocolate from Equador and a heart of 85% dark chocolate cream and “nougatine au grué”
• The “Lactée” with milk chocolate, caramel and hazelnuts
• The “Gourmande” with mango, passion fruit and coriander.

Here again my passion for chocolate created a sudden attraction between me and the “Creative”.

However I did appreciate also the “Gourmande” as I do like the freshness and the crispiness of fruit added to any sort of creamy cake.

At Un Dimanche à Paris, another gluten free Christmas pastry is the “Sapin”.

A cutie small “tree” with vanilla cream, dark 85% chocolate mousse, gianduja, gently sat on a cocoa sablé Breton.

So delicious!

Last but not least, here she comes our beloved Sylvie, founder and pastry chef at Biosphère Café, the very first gluten free and organic restaurant and coffee shop to open in Paris almost four years ago.

You might know that Sylvie is a self-taught pastry chef and I am amazed at all the things she able to achieve by herself.

Besides her determination and passion make her a woman that I do admire.

On the occasion of the gluten free week in Paris organised by Soraya from the blog Gluten free in Paris last November, I had the chance to taste Sylvie’s new

Christmas bûche :

• The new Cheese cake with red berries
• The “Praliné-noisette”, more traditional flavour, yummy and unctuous
• The “Tout chocolat” that is also lactose and eggs-free.

This chocolate bûche was so good, I loved its taste and consistency.

Sylvie also managed to make the “Galette des Rois”, another typical French cake that is very hard to make gluten free because of its “pâte feuilleté”.

A big Bravo to Sylvie for achieving this one too: we did had a great time eating it.

One last word to add to this special Christmas post…

May your holidays be full of Love, family, good friends and good…cakes!