Instead of kicking off the holiday season with cookies (though there will surely be plenty of those), I decided to make a roll cake, which I associate with the holidays since it makes me think of yule logs.
There's no fancy woodland decorations here, I'm afraid, but let's just take a dusting of powdered sugar and a handful of imagination, and fit this cake into the holiday theme. Everything seems to take on a special holiday glow this time of year and I just love it!
Now, you might call this a roulade, a jelly roll, or a swiss roll, but I'll just call it a roll cake for simplicity sake. I only very recently ventured into making a roll cake with the matcha-red bean version but I feel like this is my first "official" roll cake endeavor and I think I just may have overcome fears of making this type of cake.
Since my desserts have about a 90% likelihood of involving chocolate, it's not surprising I made a chocolate roll cake. I started with a recipe that caught my eye in a recent issue of Cooking Light. I thought I'd make a smaller version so I took the base chocolate sponge cake recipe and divided it in half. I baked my cake in a quarter - as opposed to half - sheet pan so the roll is 9-inches long. I like making small batches, especially when I'm first road-testing a recipe, but I have to say my husband suggested I make a regular size of this next time! Instead of following through with the suggested lemon filling, I thought, more chocolate...because that's just how we roll! In the end, I decided to make a mocha whipped cream filling to give the cake a little bit of dimension beyond pure chocolate.
I had no issues making this cake, even adjusting it for a smaller version. It takes a couple of steps to separately whip the egg yolks and whites, and to ultimately incorporate everything together, but with a gentle hand (and a clean dish towel), there were no mishaps like cracks in the cake to worry about. I wound up with a light, moist, spongy chocolate cake, and a creamy, soft chocolate-coffee cream filling; it was just as it should be. In other words, I had a great dessert to share with my family.
I have to agree with my husband...I should have made a bigger roll! Next time, it'll be a regular size roll for sure.
