Vanilla yule log (and the same recipe built as a cake)

Dulce de leche: cook the can of condensed milk two and a half hours to turn it into caramel. Transfer to a small saucepan with vanilla and a pinch of salt, bring to a quick boil and mix in the gelatine.

When it drops to 140F (60C), add butter to cut the sweetness and improve the mouthfeel.

Vanilla ganache montee: infuse a third of the heavy cream with vanilla seeds and pods, sieve it over the white chocolate and save the pods for the praline. Mix well, add gelatin and the remaining chilled heavy cream.

Refrigerate the ganache overnight before whipping.

Biscuit: melt butter with vanilla seeds and cool to room temperature.

Mix the flour, almond meal, baking powder and raw sugar; add egg white, yolks, heavy cream and the melted butter and mix on high. Transfer to another container.

In a clean mixing bowl beat egg whites with sugar to medium-firm peaks, 'like Santa Claus hat'.

Fold a third of the meringue into the almond-butter mixture, then the rest.

Bake the biscuit on a baking tray for the log, or in a tart pan for the cake.

Blend saved vanilla beans with grapeseed oil and sieve; brush the cooled biscuit generously with this oil.

Praline: cook water and sugar 5 minutes, add blanched almonds and the saved vanilla beans and stir; it crystallizes after a few minutes. Keep stirring until each almond is coated in amber caramel, about 15 minutes. Add a pinch of salt.

Sable breton: cream room-temperature butter with vanilla, raw sugar, almond meal and 3 g fleur de sel. Add egg yolks and the flour mixed with baking powder.

Roll the dough straight away to a quarter inch, 6 mm, sheet and freeze it; bake 25 minutes, then cut into shapes immediately, a rectangle for the log and a round for the cake.

Whip about half the ganache montee to soft peaks, not over, or it won't spread.

Log, built upside down: pipe in mousse and even it with a spoon, then a thick layer of dulce de leche, the soaked biscuit, the praline, more mousse and the sable breton. Freeze overnight.

Variation, cake, built from the bottom: sable crust, mousse, biscuit moistened with vanilla oil, praline, dulce de leche, more mousse. Freeze, demold and finish with the remaining mousse.