My friend Dorothy recently hosted a dinner at her home when one of our law school classmates from Seattle came through town on a business trip. I offered to bring dessert and since I didn't need to feed many people, I decided to make a smaller-sized cake, the "Butterscotch Cream Roll-Up" from Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson. It's a vanilla chiffon cake rolled up with butterscotch whipped cream and sprinkled with almonds. The cake is served on its end, with an exposed top, just like the Baked Stump du Nöel.
This cake includes a butterscotch sauce that does double duty. It's both incorporated into the whipped cream filling and served alongside the cake. To make the sauce, you bring butter and dark brown sugar to a simmer; add heavy cream and boil the mixture until darkened; and let the sauce cool slightly before finishing it off with whiskey, vanilla, and salt. You chill the sauce until it's cold.
For the chiffon cake, you combine most of the liquid ingredients (oil, egg yolks, water, and vanilla) in one bowl; sift together the dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar) in another; add the wet ingredients into the dry ones; and fold in egg whites that have been whipped with sugar to firm peaks. I spread the batter into a parchment-lined, greased, and floured half sheet pan to bake.
After the cake was cool, I pulled it out of the pan and trimmed off the edges. Then I cut it lengthwise into four strips, with each piece of cake still attached to a strip of parchment paper underneath. I covered all of the cake pieces with a layer butterscotch cream -- that I made by whipping heavy cream with some of the chilled butterscotch sauce until it held soft peaks -- and sprinkled on some toasted sliced almonds. I rolled up the cake into a large cylinder, abutting the strips of cake together as I formed the roll. I spread more butterscotch cream around the entire outside of the cylinder, sprinkled on some more sliced almonds, and put the cake in the fridge until it was ready to serve.
I love the way a spiral cake like this looks after it's sliced. The vertical stripes are very eye-catching (although this cake literally pales in comparison to Ottolenghi's stripe cake, which has a striking color contrast between the deep berry frosting and the lemon cake). This cake was outstanding. The butterscotch cream was sweet but so light and airy, and I loved the crunch from the almonds throughout. I warmed up the remaining butterscotch sauce and let people spoon it over their slices of cake; for me the sauce was too sweet (even though it had a marvelous butterscotch flavor) and unnecessary, but everyone else spooned on copious amounts of the stuff and ate it all.
My absolute favorite part of this cake was the cake itself. I love chiffon cake, which has the lightness of an airy sponge cake but the moist and tender texture of a butter cake. I tasted the edges of the cake that I trimmed off, and I couldn't believe how delicious they were, even plain. The chiffon cake was also very easy to roll without cracking. You could pair this chiffon cake with basically any type of whipped cream or buttercream filling to make a beautiful and delicious roll-up cake in whatever flavor you like. This is a cake that I will remember.
Recipe: "Butterscotch Cream Roll-Up" from Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson.
Previous Post: "These Stripes Are Solid: Ottolenghi Lemon Blackcurrant Stripe Cake," August 1, 2018.
This cake includes a butterscotch sauce that does double duty. It's both incorporated into the whipped cream filling and served alongside the cake. To make the sauce, you bring butter and dark brown sugar to a simmer; add heavy cream and boil the mixture until darkened; and let the sauce cool slightly before finishing it off with whiskey, vanilla, and salt. You chill the sauce until it's cold.
For the chiffon cake, you combine most of the liquid ingredients (oil, egg yolks, water, and vanilla) in one bowl; sift together the dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar) in another; add the wet ingredients into the dry ones; and fold in egg whites that have been whipped with sugar to firm peaks. I spread the batter into a parchment-lined, greased, and floured half sheet pan to bake.
My absolute favorite part of this cake was the cake itself. I love chiffon cake, which has the lightness of an airy sponge cake but the moist and tender texture of a butter cake. I tasted the edges of the cake that I trimmed off, and I couldn't believe how delicious they were, even plain. The chiffon cake was also very easy to roll without cracking. You could pair this chiffon cake with basically any type of whipped cream or buttercream filling to make a beautiful and delicious roll-up cake in whatever flavor you like. This is a cake that I will remember.
Recipe: "Butterscotch Cream Roll-Up" from Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson.
Previous Post: "These Stripes Are Solid: Ottolenghi Lemon Blackcurrant Stripe Cake," August 1, 2018.
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