The only rolled cakes I have ever made have all been from Baked cookbooks. I don't know why I don't make them more often -- there is something so fun about a jelly roll. I was happy to see Baked Occasions' recipe for a "Light and Lemony Jelly Roll with Raspberry Cream Filling" to celebrate the Vernal Equinox.
To make the batter for the lemon sponge cake, you beat egg yolks and sugar until very thick and pale; add lemon zest and lemon extract; and alternately fold in egg whites (that have been beaten with cream of tartar and salt to stiff peaks) and the sifted dry ingredients (cake flour and baking powder). You spread the batter into a parchment-lined half-sheet pan and bake.
After you take the cake out of the oven, you cover it with damp paper towels and let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Then you remove the towels, sprinkle powdered sugar over the surface, cover the cake with a tea towel, and invert the cake out of the pan and onto the towel. You remove the parchment paper (which is now on top of the cake), sprinkle over more powdered sugar, roll up the cake in the tea towel, and let it cool rolled up inside the towel.
The filling for this cake is lightly sweetened vanilla whipped cream with some strained raspberry puree folded in. After the cake is cool, you unroll it, spread on the raspberry whipped cream, sprinkle on halved raspberries, roll it back up with the filling inside, and chill the cake to set. The recipe calls for a huge amount of whipped cream filling -- much more than I could fit inside the roll. I spread all of it on top of the cake before rolling it up, but most of it just squished out the far end as I formed the roll. Most of the raspberry pieces also rode the wave of exploding whipped cream and were pushed out of the far end of the cake, so I hardly had any fruit pieces in the finished cake.
This is a very pretty dessert. The cake had the perfect texture. It was soft and spongy with small and uniformly-sized air bubbles. The lemon flavor was strong and bright. But I was not impressed with the raspberry whipped cream. While the pink color was cute and provided a nice visual contrast, I didn't think that the cream had much flavor. I thought it could have used both more sugar and more raspberry flavor -- although the latter problem could have been caused by my omitting the optional Chambord liqueur, (which would have enhanced both the flavor and the color) and the fact that I didn't end up with much fresh fruit inside the cake.
I think I would have preferred a lemony filling to reinforce the flavor of the cake -- perhaps lemon curd folded into whipped cream. Regardless, I thought this was a great spring dessert.
Recipe: "Light and Lemony Jelly Roll with Raspberry Cream Filling" from Baked Occasions by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
Previous Post: "Baked Sunday Mornings: Banana in a Blanket," March 2, 2014.
To make the batter for the lemon sponge cake, you beat egg yolks and sugar until very thick and pale; add lemon zest and lemon extract; and alternately fold in egg whites (that have been beaten with cream of tartar and salt to stiff peaks) and the sifted dry ingredients (cake flour and baking powder). You spread the batter into a parchment-lined half-sheet pan and bake.
After you take the cake out of the oven, you cover it with damp paper towels and let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Then you remove the towels, sprinkle powdered sugar over the surface, cover the cake with a tea towel, and invert the cake out of the pan and onto the towel. You remove the parchment paper (which is now on top of the cake), sprinkle over more powdered sugar, roll up the cake in the tea towel, and let it cool rolled up inside the towel.
This is a very pretty dessert. The cake had the perfect texture. It was soft and spongy with small and uniformly-sized air bubbles. The lemon flavor was strong and bright. But I was not impressed with the raspberry whipped cream. While the pink color was cute and provided a nice visual contrast, I didn't think that the cream had much flavor. I thought it could have used both more sugar and more raspberry flavor -- although the latter problem could have been caused by my omitting the optional Chambord liqueur, (which would have enhanced both the flavor and the color) and the fact that I didn't end up with much fresh fruit inside the cake.
I think I would have preferred a lemony filling to reinforce the flavor of the cake -- perhaps lemon curd folded into whipped cream. Regardless, I thought this was a great spring dessert.
Recipe: "Light and Lemony Jelly Roll with Raspberry Cream Filling" from Baked Occasions by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
Previous Post: "Baked Sunday Mornings: Banana in a Blanket," March 2, 2014.
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