Valentines Roll Cake {Recipe & Tutorial}

Happy Valentines Day!!

This is the cake I made for my darling Valentine this year.

I saw a photo of a cake with vertical layers ages ago, and have been dying to give it a try. I used my trusty old Swiss Roll recipe and fed it some steroids!

I love how it looks so simple and unassuming from the outside.

Then BAM, you cut it open and this happens:

Vertical Layers Roll Cake     PRINT

Serves 20

Ingredients:

Swiss Roll:	)
3 large eggs	)
125g golden caster sugar	)
1 tsp vanilla	) x 4
125g all purpose flour	)
pinch salt	)
1 Tbsp warm water	)

Red food colour

Filling:

About 800g strawberry jam

Topping:

400ml double cream

2 Tbsp meringue powder (optional)

2 Tbsp castor sugar

Strawberries

Method:

Preheat oven to 200ºC.

Bake swiss rolls one at a time:

Grease and line the bottom of a swiss roll tin or baking tray.

Beat the eggs, castor sugar and vanilla together until it becomes very pale and thick and forms ribbons when dropped from the beater. Sift flour and salt in in two batches, folding it in gently until the batter is smooth. Fold in the warm water.

Spread batter evenly over the bottom of the baking tray. Reserve a couple of tablespoons of batter (from each batch) in a small bowl to be used later.

Bake for 10 minutes, until light golden brown and it springs back to the touch.

Remove from the oven, and working quickly, split the cake in half lengthwise, remove the first half onto a piece of parchment paper. Trim off all the edge crusts.

Spread thinly with some of the jam. Roll up from one end. Now move the second half to the parchment paper, trim and spread with jam. Butt the ends of the first rolled piece and the second piece, roll the second piece tightly around the first piece, increasing the size of the swiss roll, Choose one end to be the bottom of the cake, stand it up on the bottom up against a vertical surface to keep it upright and keep the flap in place.

Be sure to spread the jam very thin. You want a solid layer of colour, but keep it to a minimum or the cake will be very sweet!

Repeat with the second and third swiss rolls, adding each new piece to the big roll, keeping the bottom side level.

Mix red food colour into the reserved batter (there should be some from all three swiss rolls already made). Draw hearts onto the back of the parchment paper lining for the last swiss roll. Grease and line the baking tray with the parchment paper. Grease the parchment paper, then pipe the red batter onto the hearts. 

Bake for 2 minutes to set the hearts. Allow to cool.

Trim the flap on the rolled swiss roll to remove the hard edge.

Make up the last batch of swiss roll batter. Spread it carefully over the red hearts, covering the bottom of the baking tray. Bake for 10 minutes as before. Split, trim and spread with jam.

Roll the first piece of patterned cake around the swiss roll, covering the trimmed edge, ensuring the hearts are the right way up. Trim the second piece to fit between the edges of the first piece so that both edges butt up against each other. If you are careful not to get jam over the edges and butt the edges tightly, the join is hardly noticeable. Wrap tightly with parchment paper or and acetate collar and leave to set for a couple of hours.

Once set, trim the top of the cake so that it is level.

Add the meringue powder and caster sugar to the double cream and whip to stiff peaks.

Pipe on to the top of the cake and decorate with strawberries.

Twisted roses from my Valentine <3

Romantic Swans Valentine Cake {Video Tutorial}

With Valentines Day next Saturday, I thought it would be fun to create a tutorial for a LOVE themed cake. I have had a number of requests to do some tutorials on working with modelling chocolate, so I chose to create a Swan Topper made of white modelling chocolate for the cake.

And since I was making the cake for my darling hubby, I went with a vanilla sponge cake with strawberries and cream filling (he doesn't like chocolate and is practically allergic to buttercream icing). And strawberries are meant to be an aphrodisiac...

I thought long and hard about my design before I finally decided I'd try making PINK ganache, leaving it exposed on the top of the cake, then creating a white lacy fondant collar around the cake, covered in hearts.

Somewhere along my thought process I suddenly decided that it was high time I produced a VIDEO tutorial of the whole process! So, here it is, my very first Video Tutorial: How to Make a Romantic Swans Valentine Cake

Here is the mat I designed for the tutorial. The size of the swans is suitable to top a 7" cake. I printed the image out on blue paper so that it would contrast with the white modelling chocolate, then laminated it so that I could work directly on it. If you prefer, you can cut the pieces out and use them as templates to cut the various wing pieces.

Click here or on the image above, to download a pdf of the Pattern Mat.

I made the Modelling Chocolate as shown in my tutorial, but used white candy melts instead of white chocolate to get a more pure white product. The black and red modelling chocolate I had left over from previous cakes.

To make the Pink Ganache, for a 7" cake:

Ingredients:

          •  600g White Chocolate (chopped)

          •  200g Cream (any cream that can be whipped)

          •  Pink food colouring

          •  White food colouring (helps neutralise the yellow colour from the chocolate)

Method:

Place chopped chocolate into a large microwave safe bowl.

Heat the cream in a pan until just before boiling. Add pink food colouring to the cream until it is about the colour you want your ganache to be. Pour it over the chocolate. 

Shake the bowl around a bit until the chocolate all settles beneath the surface of the hot cream. Leave it to sit for a few minutes.

Stir the chocolate into the cream. Keep stirring until it is nice and smooth.

If you still have a few lumps of chocolate that won't melt in, pop the whole bowl into the microwave for a few seconds at a time, stirring in between, until all the lumps are gone.

Now, if the colour is looking a bit orange, add some white food colouring and mix in well. This will bring the colour back to a pleasant pink.

Leave the ganache at room temperature to cool for a few hours, stirring it occasionally until it becomes thick enough to hold its shape, but easily spreadable.

I have previously posted a Tutorial for Milk/Plain Chocolate Ganache. The method is the same, but the ratios of Chocolate : Cream differ depending on the kind of chocolate you are using. I use the following ratios:

White Chocolate     3 : 1    Cream

Milk/Plain Chocolate    2 1/2 : 1    Cream

Dark Chocolate    2 : 1    Cream

I never make 100% Milk Chocolate Ganache because it's flavour just lacks depth.

The recipe I used for the Vanilla Sponge can be found in this post. I used HALF the recipe and split it between two 7" pans.

This is my Valentine enjoying his cake. I surprised him with it when he came home from work and he had a moment of panic, thinking he had forgotten about Valentines day! Too funny.

Happy Baking!