Jelly Roll Cake

My friend Beril messaged me a few weeks ago asking about a recipe for a Jelly Roll cake.  I was thrilled because I could use Stella to test out her egg white whipping skills.

I used to make this cake with my mom when I was like 13 or something, but I couldn't remember the recipe off the top of my head, so I searched around and found one that was as similar to my memories as I could get it.  The original recipe can be found here.  Of course, I modified it because, apparently, I can't just leave a recipe alone when it crosses my path.

Ingredients:
-4 eggs, separated
-2/3 cup sugar
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-1 tsp almond extract
-3/4 cup flour
-1/4 tsp salt
-3/4 tsp baking powder
-2 tbsp milk

1.  First, separate your eggs.  I learned at a very young age that when you're separating eggs for the purpose of foaming the egg whites, you don't want a single drop of yolk (basically anything with a lipid) get into the whites.  That's why I do this in separate bowls rather than the big mixing bowl itself.

2.  Beat egg whites until foamy.  It's amazing.  It starts out like this.

And becomes like this. 

It should be able to hold high peaks and not lose its form.  Good job, Stella!  She did a very nice job foaming egg whites all by herself while i did other things. 

3.  I then transferred the foam to another bowl, and got working on the batter.  I added yolks, sugar, and two kinds of extracts and mixed until I got a nice yellow mixture.

4.  In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.  I don't have a sifter, so I just whisked it by hand to break apart any large clumps of flour.

Okay, now we're ready to start putting things together!  Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture.  Add the milk.  You should get a pretty thick batter.

5.  Now it's time to fold in the egg white foam. 

I usually use a rubber spatula, and i do this sort of flower pedal motion, where I draw the batter from the outside into the middle like I'm drawing a flower.  The point is, you want to mix without destroying the pretty bubbles in the egg white foam. 

6.  Preheat oven to 400F.  Pour foamy batter into a jelly roll pan (or some sort of large pan with sides) lined with wax paper and spread out evenly.

7.  Bake for 6 minutes.  That's it!  After all, it's just air.

Cute!

8.  On a towel dusted with powdered sugar (yes, this part made me cringe)

invert the cake so that it does a face plant into the sugar.  Nice.

Then you have to peel back the wax paper very slowly.  Unlike a bandaid.  It's like when you're peeling back a label from your new electronic device.

So far so good.

Okay, success.  How nice do those bubbles look? 

I could just eat the spongy cake as is, couldn't you?

9.  But let's move on.  Okay, so here's a fun part.  You get to roll the cake along with the towel. 

Here we go...

This part made me so nervous. 

Tada!  Set it to cool on a rack.  This is like when you set your hair in curlers.

10.  After about half an hour when the cake is no longer warm, unroll the cake very gently.  You'll find that the cake will kinda wanna roll back into its rolly shape.  This is very very good.  Curlers did its job.

Before it gets too rigid, you'll want to fill the roll with something.  I used this spreadable fruit. 

I put it in a bowl and beat it a little with a spoon to make it nice and spreadable.  Then i spread the jam all over the inside. 

I might have gone overboard with it a bit.  But that's okay.  You can also use cool whip, or even ice cream (!) to fill the cake.  I'm trying that this summer for sure.  If i forget, someone remind me.

Okay, so then you'll want to roll your baby back onto itself. 

Pretty, huh?  Just to keep it from sticking to things, I covered the outside with some more powdered sugar.

I love the feel of the sponge cake.  It's very light, fluffy, and springy.  Just as Beril wanted :)

Okay, but we're all waiting to see what the inside looks like, right?  Here it is with the edges cut off.  I ate the edges.  They were delicious.

Okay, let's give it cut in the middle.

Yum!

I was...how should I say this?  Pee-my-pants-excited that it turned out this good.  I guess i really have improved as a baker since I was in the teens, cuz the jelly rolls I made pretty much all cracked.  But here we have success!

These jelly rolls are fabulous with coffee, milk, hot chocolate, or even with a scoop of french vanilla ice cream.  Here we are!

I brought the roll cakes to Beril in her office last week, and she reported back that it was delicious.  Score!  I like making people happy with my baking.

It really wasn't terribly difficult.  It's just about 1) foaming the whites in a clean bowl, 2) rolling the cake while it's warm, 3) unrolling it when it's cool.  Got it?  Good. 

Now go bake something. 

Have a wonderful week, SSUR readers!  Thanks for being such faithful friends of the blog :)  I was so surprised at how many fans of it there were on facebook.  Invite your friends, especially those who like food and cooking! :)
 
For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.