Lots of chocolate for the sponge roll....
That's how we like it? Made it for the morning tea at work.
Recipe adapted from Chocolate Indulgence Magazine.
Sponge:
2 eggs
75g caster sugar
45g cake flour
5g good quality cocoa powder
pinch vanilla salt
25g unsalted butter, melted
Filling:
250ml cream
1 tsp vanilla essense
100g Lindt Dark Chocolate 100% Cocoa
100g Lindt Milk Chocolate Orange Creme
25ml Water
Method:
The Sponge:
Preheat oven to 210C.
Grease and line a 15x30cms rectangular tin.
Beat egg and sugar over bain marie, until all sugar has dissolved and mixture ribbony, light and fluffy.
Sift together flour, cocoa and salt into the egg mixture, fold gently to create a light batter.
Mix a couple of spoons of batter into the melted butter, and then carefully fold the butter mix back into the egg mixture.
Pour the batter in the prepared cake tin, and smooth out.
Bake for 10 minutes or until it's just firm to touch. Remove from oven when ready.
Sprinkle a bit of caster sugar on a clean tea towel, lift the sponge still in baking paper and turn upside down and place the sheet sponge onto the tea towel, roll up and set side to cool.
The filling:
Whip the cream with vanilla till soft peak and set a side.
Melt the chocolate, and add water to make a smooth mass.
Fold a small amount of cream to the chocolate, and then fold chocolate back to the remaining cream, chill in fridge for 10 minutes.
Assembly:
Unroll the sponge, Evenly spread about half of the filling leaving a bit of gap along the long edge, carefully roll up.
Chill in fridge for 10 minutes.
Apply some of the left over cream fillings on the outside, and as finishing touch, I warm up the rest of the filling a bit to return it to a smoother glaze, let cool and drizzle over the roulade...
Submitting this swiss roll - chocolate roulade to Aspiring Bakers #9 - Swiss Rolling Good Times ....
A fresh strawberry cream cake.... A lovely delicious challenge hosted by Jana from Cherry Tea Cakes.
It would be a much more fun event or events for us had it been summer for us... part of the pain being in the south hemisphere is that we don't have the seasonal fruits as the north - strawberries can be found but quite expensive, so are other berries and summer fruit. After my first attempt, I realised I could've used kiwi fruit which we can find quite a lot in the supermarkets lately, but the second attempt never took place, Luke's birthday, school production, and Bianca's school production took most of our time, plus the house renovation....
Apart from hubby, the children are not too keen on cream cakes, don't ask me why, but they are chocoholics, and whenever there's a chance to ask for a cake, it's always, chocolate cake, especially for Luke, chocolate mud, he wouldn't even take sponge.
I didn't want to make the the cake too big, the fresh cream wouldn't keep. The original recipes for the challenge can be found here:
First of all, I wanted to make a small heart shaped Red Velvet Strawberry Stack Cake....
Red velvet for the Red strawberries, always wanted to make a red velvet cake.
I used the recipe by Nigella Lawson for Red Velvet Cupcakes, but changed the frosting to cream cheese frosting because of the Creme Fraisier...
FOR THE CUPCAKES
• 250g plain flour
• 2 x 15ml tbsp cocoa powder, sifted
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g soft unsalted butter
• 200g caster sugar
• 1 x heaped 15ml tbsp Christmas-red paste food colouring
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 175ml buttermilk
• 1 tsp cider vinegar or other vinegar
• 2 x 12-bun muffin tins
CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
• 100g icing sugar (no need to sift if using a processor)
• 250g cream cheese
• 250g fresh cream
• 1 tsp lemon juice
I made 4 small heart shaped cake for my strawberry stack and 6 big cup cakes using the Texax Muffin Tin.
It's very hard to line the cakes, as I found out they are pretty fragile so I couldn't slice them thinner as I planned...
And I got a bit too ambitious stacking all the 4 cakes up....
But thanks to Nigella, the flavour of the cake was really really good...
And for the cup cakes... I brought them to the little get together with girl friend and got welcomed by her children...
Monique's kinder is having a Christmas party today, and all the parents are bringing food in for morning tea after the Christmas concert.
The children did a wonderful job performing a show of Santa in Aussie Bush!
We had a big food list, and I was very happy that I got the job of providing small cakes....
I was thinking about that for a week and couldn't decide what to bring, but I ended up with 2 types of cakes: Individual Coffee Mascapone Cream Chocolate Sponge and Big Profiteroles with Chocolate Creme Patisserie and Chocolate Glaze.
I must admit that the individual cakes are largely influenced by Tiramisu, which is one of the all time favourite in the family.
I used Margaret Fulton's Whisked Sponge cake recipe as the base recipe for the chocolate sponge:
3 eggs
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 cup self-raising flour, sifted
1 teaspoon melted butter
2 table spoons of boiling water
25g dutched cocoa powder - sift with flour
Line and grease a 20cm x 30cm swiss roll tray.
whisk eggs and sugar until thick and pale and leaves a trail when lifting up the whisk (hey, that's why I bought a new bench top mixer)
Fold in flour, cocoa powder, butter and water with a metal spoon, then turn into the prepared tray.
Bake in a preheated moderate hot oven - 190C or 375F for 20 minutes or until ready.
Turn over on another tray and cool, but cover with the baking paper to retain moist.
When the sponge is being baked, make the frosting:
250g mascapone cheese
250ml thickened cream
3 egg whites
60g caster sugar
Liqueur Coffee Mix:
1 shot of strong espresso coffee, either using perculator coffee, but if pressing time, use good instant espresso coffee.
1 table spoon of Marsala
Whisk egg whites until soft peak, gradually beat in sugar, 1 table spoon at a time, until it's glossy and peak form.
Use a seperate bowl, beat cream till soft peak and add room temperatured mascapone cheese, mix well.
Gently fold in the meringue, and add in half of the liqueur coffee mix.
Spread half of the liqueur coffee mix on the cooled sponge.
use a round cookie cutter (up to each individual to decide size), cut out a piece of the sponge, the sponge is very light and rose quite high, so I actually sliced it length ways into 2 disks.
Place the bottom layer of the sponge into the cup cake casing,
Pipe the frosting onto one layer and put on the top layer of sponge, pipe more frosting to cover the top and spinkle (sift) on extra dutched cocoa powder.
The good thing about these little cakes is that they are fridge friendly and better after setting in fridge over night, so I don't need to do any rushing around for the 10 am Christmas concert!
I will update a post about the big profiterole buns tomorrow.
