Second wave of holiday baking

Two days ago, OCT alerted me of his department's annual dessert competition. And I wanted to join. Firstly because it gave me an opportunity to make something unusual than stuff I usually bake. And quite frankly, for the prize. Although at that point, I didn't know what the prize yet.

So, I spent the better half of yesterday in the baking project. After some careful consideration, I decided to make a Chocolate Christmas Log. It'sa recipe with no flour and no butter but with lots of bittersweet chocolate. I tried some of the scrape, and they were tasty! I considered that as an auspicious start!

After the cake base was cooled, I went on to decorate my Christmas log with my limited decorative skill. Luckily it's only a log cake, so I could simply pour lots of chocolate ganache over the cake, and sprinkle some crushed peppermint candies and chocolate shaving on top of it. It definitely has plenty of room for improvement, but I guess this should do for now.

Two hours after I happily put the cake into the fridge, I found that the crushed peppermint candies melted! There wasn't much I could do about it since it was already quite late. Without the candy, the Christmas log seems like a boring and dull log. Well, even if it has become an ugly log, I still had to submit my item.

And guess what! There was only 2 participants! So, the judges announced that there's no winner this year and both the participants got prizes! Turned out the prize was a 25 dollar gift certificate....

Well, at least there's something. And I definitely see this as a good beginning.