Holiday cakes and pastries are popular not only for their rich flavors and textures, but also for their appearance—an intricately decorated shortbread Christmas cookie, for example, shows craftsmanship and the baker’s desire to invoke joy in its presentation. We imagine the baker rolling out the dough, choosing the perfect cookie cutter, and painstakingly applying the icing after the cookie has baked and cooled, all the while envisioning the winsome final product.

The French Bûche de Noël, or Yule Log Cake, is the embodiment of a Christmas confection whose appearance evokes feelings of warmth and hominess as appealing as the sweet ingredients that go into making it. Typically having a base of sponge cake layered with chocolate buttercream frosting, when rolled up the Bûche de Noël takes on a log shape that is then frosted with icing raked with a fork to give the impression of tree bark. Ambitious bakers may add embellishments such as candy lichens or sprigs of holly. On either end of the log, the chocolate icing appears in neat spirals like tree rings.

There are many stories about the origins of the Yule Log Cake, but all lead back to the French tradition of burning a log in the fireplace—and sometimes the end of a whole tree, with the top sticking out of a window—to celebrate the winter solstice, burning the old and welcoming in the new. Sometimes a portion of the previous year’s tree or log would be kept to burn at this occasion as well. Eventually, Napoleon issued a mandate for families to close their chimneys to avoid draftiness, to which he attributed the spread of disease in France. To preserve the tradition, bakers in the late nineteenth century developed the cake to replicate their beloved log.

Although we are not restricted from using fireplaces these days, baking a Bûche de Noël is an enriching holiday activity that will provide a beautiful centerpiece and let you and your loved ones reflect on the past and the future. As you gaze upon your chocolate tree rings, think about all of the joys of the past year, and as you wash down a decadent slice with a glass of eggnog, imagine the riches of the year to come!