You know how food meets cute is kind of my thing?! So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon artfully made cake rolls and the fact, that I had never thought of using cake dough as paint and parchment paper as my canvas! Japanese baker bloggers have masters this cake art to the highest degree and it was time for me to join them 😉 Today I am just showing you the basic principles of the technique using a chevrons pattern, but I am sure your imagination is already going wild with patterns and words and whole pictures.
Chevron Cake Roll
By Dani Gudith
Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Total time: 45 minutes
Serves 6
4 egg whites
4 egg yolks
70g fine sugar
10g sugar
6g vanilla sugar (or 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract)
70g flour
food color
Filling
1 and 1/2 cups white chocolate (chopped)
1 cup heavy whipping cream
3/4 cup fresh strawberries (quartered)
You will also need a printed pattern that you want to trace. I used this chevrons pattern: AndCute Grey Chevrons A4
1. Place your printed chevrons pattern onto your cookie sheet, you can use butter to make it stick. Cover the paper with parchment or baking paper.
2. Beat egg whites and fine sugar together until you have firm peaks. Preheat the oven to 350F/180C.
3. Beat egg yolks, regular sugar and vanilla together in a separate bowl. Now fold the egg yolk mixture under the egg white mixture.
4. Now add the flour and gently fold it in. Take out about 1/3 of the dough and add some food color. I used red powder from the Asian Supermarket.
5. Using a piping bag with a rather flat tip (like Wilton #352) start tracing the pattern with your accent color, basically moving from tip to tip of the zig zags.
6. Bake this pattern for 2 minutes then remove, let cool for 3 minutes and spread the light dough on top. Bake another 11 minutes.
7. Remove the baking tray from the oven sprinkle the cake with sugar and place another piece for parchment paper on top, place a cutting board on top and then flip the tray over. Remove the tray and then gently remove the parchment paper from the pattern side.
8. Place yet another piece of parchment paper on the pattern and put another cutting board on top to flip it around again, so it is sitting on the pattern side.
9. Using the parchment paper underneath roll up the cake into a roll. It is best to do this while the cake is still warm. Letting it cool “rolled” helps create memory for the shape and prevents later cracking. I learned this from Anna Olson 🙂
10. Once the roll is completely cool make a filling of your choice from just a layer of jelly to some whipped white chocolate. I used whipped white chocolate and strawberries: let the chocolate melt in the cream you brought to a simmer and let the mixture cool down. Then beat until the mix reaches cream cheese like consistency and spread onto the cake roll, place strawberries on top and gently roll the cake into a roll.
So just keep rolling, rolling, rolling 😉
Hugs
Dani!
