A light, airy chocolate cake filled with sweet vanilla whipped cream rolled together into a perfect swirl and topped off with a rich chocolate ganache. These are the things I hoped to achieve when attempting my first ever Swiss Roll.
I scoured the Pinterest boards, looking for a swiss roll that caught my eye, and settled on a recipe by a contributor to The Pioneer Woman‘s website. She’s got a Restaurant-style Salsa I absolutely swear by and a new line of adorable floral kitchenware at Walmart, which I discovered when I was looking for 8″ cake pans last week. I walked out with a couple of little prep bowls which you will definitely see on upcoming posts. No, she doesn’t pay me to advertise for her. I just like my tchotchkes.
Sorry! All of this is completely unrelated to this Swiss Roll. I chose this recipe because it claimed that although it looked hard to make (it sure did), it was actually forgiving and easy. I sure do love the words “forgiving” and “easy” when attempting something for the first time. I think I may now regard the words “forgiving” and “easy” to be the kiss of death when looking for recipes. Maybe that’s going a little too far. It wasn’t as hard as it felt, but I did find certain parts to be a bit finicky. I ended up making the sponge twice (RIP 8 eggs) and I have a few tips that the original post doesn’t talk about that made the second sponge work a lot better.
First, let’s deal with the eggs. This first and very critical step is how the sponge gets its aeration. It’s got no leavener and a very short bake time (5-6 min.), so managing the air in your batter is key.
First thing not mentioned in the OP is that it’s much easier to start with room temperature eggs. The first time, I was using cold eggs. The second time, I let them come up to temperature first. The recipe says that it takes two minutes for the eggs to come to 120F over the bain-marie (double boiler), but when I was using eggs straight from the fridge, it took nearly 5 minutes and the eggs were already at that “ribbon stage.” Bringing them up to room temperature beforehand made the timings mentioned in the recipe truer to actual time. I don’t know if it had an effect on the overall outcome of either sponge, but I know that when I read a recipe and it takes twice the time it’s supposed to for a step, it makes me wonder what I’ve done wrong.
The second tip I have is the method in which I incorporated the dry ingredients. The photo in the post shows her using a hand mixer. The recipe below tells you to gently fold it in. The important thing is to not knock out all the air you’ve just spent a lot of time building with the eggs. So, I opted to fold using a wire whisk. I think this may also be one of the times where sifting the dry ingredients is absolutely a must. Cocoa can be incredibly clumpy. I didn’t sift the first time, and I ended up with little dots of crispy raw cocoa in the batter after I baked it. It was gross. Don’t skip the sift.
That first sponge went directly into the garbage. No…that’s a lie. I actually turned it out onto the parchment and used that as my trial run for the rolling stage, which is by far the scariest part of this bake, but I am massively getting ahead of myself.
Third tip: when pouring the batter into the jelly roll pan, hold it as low as possible. Again, this preserves the air in the batter. Gently work the batter into the corners. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You end up trimming these edges anyway. This offset spatula (thanks, Secret Santa!) is the perfect tool for it. At the risk of sounding repetitive, the reason is that it lets you gently work the batter into the corner without two many swipes or that much pressure. The less you touch the batter, the less opportunity to knock out air. Did I mention air was important?
In the very short time this cake bakes, set up your parchment dusted with cocoa powder. A little sifting goes a long way here, too.
Flipping over the pan onto the dusted surface gives me massive anxiety. I’m surprised it worked as well as it did (both times). I regrettably do not have any photos or video of rolling the cake. It’s very time sensitive to do while the cake is still hot, and the thin cake cools very quickly. As seconds tick away and the cake cools, you have more of a chance of cracks. The original post says not to worry about the cracks. My perfectionism begs to differ.
In addition to the cake being more pliable when hot, cooling the cake while it’s all rolled up helps the cake retain its shape when you roll it back up with the filling. For that reason, and because it would melt the whipped cream, wait until the cake is completely cool to unroll it, spread your filling, and roll back up.
In the meantime, make the incredibly easy whipped cream. Some of the recipes I browsed before settling on this one were marshmallowy in nature. I opted for this simple, easy, slightly sweet vanilla whipped cream. It’s classic and delicious. I could eat it alone with a spoon. I wouldn’t judge you if you did just that.
Wow! I don’t have any photos of the roll during or after rolling it up! Blogger Fail! I was really focused on getting it right and not cracking the cake.
I do, however, have a delightful video the chocolate ganache being poured over the roll. That’s my favorite part. You’ll have to pop over to my Facebook or Instagram.com to see it. At least here you can see the cake rolled up with the trimmed off edge and how great that swirl came out! No lie, I was pretty impressed with myself.
Final review of the finished product:
This cake is light and not overly sweet. The components don’t taste amazing individually, but all together, it’s a great dessert that isn’t too filling. I think it’d be a great ending for a small dinner party (do people still have those?), especially because that visual of the roll looks much more complicated than it actually is and because it needs some refrigeration to set, so you can make it the night before you’re serving it. I checked out a few other swiss roll recipes that don’t do the egg whipping over the bain-marie, and I’m tempted to try one of those a little bit down the road. Personally, I like my chocolate desserts to be richer than this. Gimme all that chocolate! But I get that there is a time and a place for that kind of decadence. (Check back with me on Valentine’s Day!) With almost unlimited flavor and filling possibilities, I doubt this is the last time I’ll make a swiss roll.
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