My friend Jim made a special request for homemade Swiss Rolls (meaning the kind sold by Little Debbie), and I was happy to oblige. I looked at a few recipes online before deciding to use one from Sally's Baking Addiction. The recipe seemed pretty straightforward: chocolate sponge cake rolled up with whipped cream, covered in chocolate ganache.
To make the cake batter, you sift all of the dry ingredients (flour, natural cocoa, baking powder, and salt) into a bowl; mix in melted butter, espresso powder, and egg yolks that have been beaten with sugar and vanilla until pale; and fold in egg whites that have been beaten with sugar to stiff peaks. You bake the batter in a parchment-lined and greased half-sheet pan.
As soon as the cake came out of the oven, I inverted it onto a cotton tea towel, peeled off the parchment, and rolled up the cake in the towel and let it cool. I made two batches of this cake and baked them seriatim, and I made the same mistake with both cakes. I neglected to sprinkle the tea towels with cocoa powder before unmolding the cakes onto them. So when the cakes were cool and I tried to unroll them, they were stuck to the towels and I couldn't avoid some breakage as I tried to carefully peel them off. It wasn't awful, but it definitely wasn't ideal.
The reason I made a double batch of cake is that I wanted to try both a single large cake roll (which took an entire batch of cake) and a set a mini cake rolls. The photo above shows the miniature size. These cake rolls were delicious. The cake was deeply chocolate-y, but light and springy, the whipped cream filling was airy and sweet, and there was a very high ratio of filling to cake. I did think the coffee flavor was a bit strong. I really enjoy the combination of coffee and chocolate and generally appreciate way that espresso powder enhances the flavor of chocolate cakes. But here, the coffee flavor seemed a bit out of place because I was expecting only chocolate and whipped cream, as you would find in the supermarket version of a Swiss roll. I might cut the amount of espresso powder in half the next time I make this recipe. But it's a small quibble. These Swiss rolls were fantastic.
Recipe: "Chocolate Cake Roll (Swiss Roll)" from Sally's Baking Addiction.
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