Swiss Roll

Today is my youngests 9th Birthday.  Both of us have been home all week with ear infections and much yuckyness.  Usually I cook the kids the cake of their choice and have it ready for their Birthdays.  This year however Luke decided he wanted to help and he wanted a swiss roll. Having joined the weekly bake off on twitter last week, more on that in next post, we decided to use Mary Berrys version in her 100 cakes and bakes book, page 8 and then adapted ours to have cream in like the one on page 11 just to make things interesting. Add to the fun one 9 year old boy full of life in short bursts and was an interesting cake but luckily a quick bake.

Cake tin needed: 33 x23 (13 x 9 inch)swiss roll tin
4 large eggs
100g (4oz) caster sugar
100g (4oz) self raising flour

for the filling 4 tsbsp strawberry or rasperry jam ( we used smooth bit less mixed fruit jam)

preheat oven 220 C/fan 200 C/gas 7

Grease the tin and line with non stick baking parchment
Whisk the eggs together with the sugar until the mix is light and frothy and leaves a trail when the whisk is lifted out

Then you need to sift the flour onto the egg mixture while GENTLY folding it in with a spactula.  At this point I had an assistant who was very enthisiastic but we managed to get coordinated and get all the flour in and keep the air in

After  gently but quickly folding the flour into the eggs it was time to pour the mix into the prepared tin, gently easing the mix into the corners before placing in the oven gently. 

photo is a bit blurred but trying to work fast here and keeping son quiet.  Years ago my Mum would make swiss rolls and my daughter who was around 4 or 5 would go in singing or stamping around her suspended floored kitchen and we would end up with very flat swiss rools! So keeping son quiet we timed off 10 minutes.  Preparing a new sheet of baking paper sprinkled with more caster sugar while waiting. 

The swiss roll sponge is ready when it is shrinking away from the edges of the tin and springy in the centre. Then time to be bold and swiftly upturn the sponge onto your sugared sheet and peel off paper from the back of the sponge.  Trim the edges of the cake which you can feed the impatient kids or have with your cup of coffee while the cake cools , and about an inch in from one short end score a line all the way along but not all the way through the sponge.

minus score as it was on other end

Now being we deviated from the first recipe and chose to add cream what you are supposed to do is roll the cake up using that scored edge as the first fold and leave it wrapped up with the paper until it's completely cool.  If however you have an excited child happen you might accidently miss this line but you can still carry on honest!!

When cool unroll your sponge and spread the jam over the sponge,  we also opted to fill with some whipped cream which worked fantastically with the slightly tart jam.

proof is in the pudding and this went down amazingly well :o)  Need a sharper knife to cut though.  This cake was really easy to make even with 'help' fairly quick and one I can see myself doing quite often for family tea times etc