I thought I’d document my Christmas recipe triumphs here, as much for my forgetful self next year as anyone.

I’m not quite sure why I’ve endured Christmas pudding for so many years, when the truth is that I just don’t like it. There, I’ve said it. So this year I volunteered to make a Yule log or bûche de Noël (sounds sexier in French, doesn’t it?)

After looking at a few recipes, I chose this Mary Berry recipe. I always trust her sensible approach to baking. However, I made a few tweaks. First, I grated some clementine zest into the whipped cream filling because, well, Christmas. And the other change I made was to ignore Mary’s instruction to pipe on the ganache. If you can’t be rustic when making a flippin’ log, when can you be?

I referred to Jamie Oliver’s recipe, as I knew he’d have my back when it came to the battle of the piping bag vs the fork. So I forked on the ganache, and finished with a sprinkle of icing sugar and foliage from our garden. (I’d also seen another of Jamie’s recipes where he used chocolate hazelnut spread for the filling, which would be lovely, but of no use to me as my youngest has a serious nut allergy).

We ate the yule log with clementines in a ginger, cardamom and star anise syrup. Although they are some big flavours, the syrup was very delicate and the clementines cut through all that chocolate richness. You can find the recipe here.

It was a big hit - I don’t think anyone missed the Christmas pud - and my Dad even described it as “a showstopper.” It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?