In Paris, it’s Lenôtre or Hediard. In Manhattan, it’s Payard or Balthazar. But in Chatham, it’s Mado Patisserie for a real Bûche de Noël, the justly celebrated French Christmas cake. It’s a symbolic Yule log, and it’s quite the event. A rich chocolate sponge cake—a Génoise cake----filled with chocolate buttercream and topped with a devastating chocolate ganache—and given the quality of the chocolate used at Mado, I use the adjective devastating deliberately—as well as meringue mushrooms out of a kid’s Christmas storybook.
This is Madeline Delosh’s first Christmas season in her bandbox of a bakery on Chatham’s Main Street, but, inspired by word of mouth, orders for this traditional Christmas confection came flying in—so many, in fact, that Delosh had to stop accepting them weeks ago. If you missed out on securing a Bûche de Noël from Mado this year, there’s always next year, and given the sublime results Mado delivers, you’ll have a whole year to look forward to this memorable treat.
