Lemon drizzles and all the rolling of Swiss

Drizzling my lemon

This week has been a little crazy.  Right off the heels of the Thanksgiving holiday...and traveling… I have half a head cold, trying to figure out my workout schedule since I am baking so much I am puffing up more than a well-laminated puff pastry.  I rushed off to auditions, shot a commercial, practiced piano, looked for Waitress the Musical tickets (hoping that they would do the #piebaking contest) and did laundry (it’s the little things, right?). All this to say, even though it gets hectic I am very effing grateful for my life.  

After my announcement that I am baking my way through GBBO, I had an outpouring of support from friends and excited acquaintances about my journey.  But now it’s finally here. And the preparation beforehand came in handy but now I have to keep up with the journey. Research, baking, preparation and blogging/posting is a little crazy town but hopefully I am up to the challenge...since it is my own personal, self-imposed challenge.

Ok- so my first practice cake for #cakeweek was a Victoria Sandwich Cake.  Which I think turned out pretty well, despite some ramen wannabe buttercream piping.  I feel like that particular sponge will come in handy for different recipes but for GBBO, different construction of cakes in the future.  I couldn’t practice as much as I wanted due to the Thanksgiving holiday, but I was able to get some recipes from my mother-in-law’s Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book and research things for #biscuitweek (I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with Pogwarts).  

So next up on the list to practice bake was the infamous Lemon Drizzle Cake.  Now, I didn’t really know what to expect. I assumed a lemony piece of cake... but not sure if it was more of a pound cake or like a fluffy, yellow cake consistency.  I looked at a bunch of different recipes to compare. And I settled on this one:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 small thin-skinned lemon (squeeze it before buying to judge)
• 200g butter, softened
• 200g caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs, beaten
• 250g self-raising flour

For the drizzle

• juice of 2 lemons
• 1 lemon
• 100g granulated sugar

Full recipe here: https://www.sainsburysmagazine.co.uk/recipes/cakes/double-lemon-drizzle-cake

Now if you notice, just like in the Victoria Sandwich recipe, this also calls for self raising flour… I don’t know why, but I find that interesting.  If anyone has backstory on this, please tell me why. I know that raising agents didn’t really come into fashion because it hadn’t been invented until the early 1900s (am I getting that date wrong?)  and it’s pretty easy to make your own self raising flour… I’ve done it once but sometimes it just feels easier to get a bag at the store. The other lemon drizzle recipes that I researched called for 3-4 tablespoons of milk.  This one didn’t. Since I had large eggs in my fridge, I changed the recipe to 3 eggs instead of 4. The quantity of batter was less than I thought it should be- I was afraid that it wouldn’t rise…oh and this is after my #bakefail -- I creamed butter and eggs together...NOT butter and sugar … what is this? Amateur hour?!  Oh wait…

And my second goof was the lemon puree… which I was excited to learn about making a lemon puree… because I had really thought about it before.  I chose to pierce a lemon a few times and then simmer in water on the stove top for about 20 minutes...but this is a reminder to you beginning bakers out there: READ THE FREAKING RECIPE, so I didn’t quarter my hot, boiled lemon afterwards and remove the seeds and the pith...so I put it in the blender whole as is… I got all the seeds out BUT the pith was still there… another #bakefail.  I fail so you don’t have to :)

I baked my first lemon drizzle- I noticed a crack or an uneven rise to the cake.  A crack is good in a Madeira cake but I don’t know about a lemon drizzle. You be the judge.  Pics below of the lemon drizzle.

It had a great lemony flavor, despite my goof of leaving the pith on for the lemon puree, but I found it a little dry and too crumbly.   When I make my next lemon drizzle cake I will definitely go with a the recipes that call for milk (about 3-4 tablespoons or so) and perhaps add a little extra lemon puree-- that is done correctly to counteract the dryness of this cake.  As a practice bake - I figure that it’s about grade C - I always feel like I can do better and WANT to do better, but I am learning despite all the goofs and not always being able to execute well… and if you don’t try then you will never know.

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Do the Swiss Roll (or just a panda rolling)

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Ok so if you don’t know Season 1, episode 1 (on the Netflix in America) is the start of Cake Week and the first bake is the swiss roll.  I have never made a swiss roll and I have barely thought of attempting it. The swiss rolls on the show look so fluffy and delicious… and it seems easy enough to roll sponge into a shape after slathering it with jelly, cream, or whatever filling you call for.  Right? Easy, right?

So I decided that I would be catch up on the bakes and just bake my first swiss roll without a practice.  How hard can sponge be? I did get some new hardware for my swiss journey. I got a jelly roll pan (10”x15”) and read up on some recipes… now to decide on a flavor.  I got some GREAT ideas from people on Facebook and such… and even though my friend, Kürt, insisted that I turn my awesome (if I do say so myself) prosciutto and gruyere biscuits into a swiss roll, I decided to go with some different flavors.  

I opted for a Cherry sponge and almond cream filling - for my high school friend Liz.  She lives in an Iowan town that is heavily influenced by all things Dutch, so cherry and almond has been speaking to her.  Plus, since I have to bake a Classic cherry cake next… I might as well get going with those cherries. On my crusade to find glacé cherries to make the #maryberry recipe of Classic Cherry Cake, I found Amarena cherries (at your friendly neighborhood Trader Joe’s).  These delicious little cherries hail from Italy and slightly darker and have a bold, bitter taste. They are used in desserts and cocktails and such. I decided that I could incorporate it into my cherry sponge for my inaugural swiss roll. Since, I did not find glacé cherries ANYWHERE except on the internet, I decided to make my own… which I will discuss in a future post- but basically you take maraschino cherries and simmer them in their own juice cocktail and sugar to candy them.  I saved the excess maraschino cherry juice and added some to my sponge mixture -- I was hoping that it would give it some extra cherry color as well… it did give it a tinge but NOT a cherry color- next time I will have to bolster it with some food coloring. I chopped up the Amarena cherries and folded them into the batter before spreading it out on the jelly roll pan.

Recipes and pics below.

There is no rising agent in this recipe… so therefore my sponge did stay pretty flat… but I was going into this “Signature” challenge pretty blind, since I have never made a swiss roll before.  I was really watching for the sponge to begin to pull away from the sides of the tin before taking it out of the oven… I do think that maybe my sponge was slightly overbaked by 30 sec or so… so I think pulling it out of the oven BEFORE the sides begin pulling away is perfectly fine.  I tipped the sponge onto parchment paper dusted with sugar as called for in the recipe… came out easily and was still warm. Now I used my knowledge of the GBBO and tried to pre-roll the sponge so it could more easily roll and retain some of that “muscle memory.” I started getting a small crack as I pre-rolled.  So I backed off and did not pre-roll the whole sponge.

I made the almond cream when the sponge was in the oven and during the short cooling time… I realized that to make the filling first probably the way to go - #bakegoof - since the sponge has a short bake time and the cooling time isn’t too terribly long.  And this way whatever filling you make has time to “set.” I opted to do a cream filling since I didn’t want to try my hand at getting a jelly set for my first challenge…..

So then I slathered my almond cream onto the sponge - note to self- use more of it next time and began rolling - note to self (notice a pattern here?)-  try to do the smallest roll possible to get a tighter roll next time.

All in all- I felt disappointed in the look of this swiss roll.  I guess I didn’t really know what to expect. But I felt like it looked small and not stately enough to be swiss roll… I had that weird straight roll thing on the inside and not the nice “snail” shape...and there was a gap with the filling.  My sponge was a little dry, like I mentioned earlier, and seemed to be slightly closed textured. Ok but...the flavor… the almond cream...ugh! I couldn’t stop licking the bowl or my fingers. So. There’s that… and I felt that sponge had a good flavor and when you got a bit of Amarena cherry in a bite- it really popped.  Not overly sweet...and a great combination. Thanks for the suggestion, Liz! But since I am not satisfied and I felt like I was stuck in #amateurhour (again, duh!) I decided that I had to try another one. Guess, I get to my #snickerdoodle flavor anyways.

Until next time, bake on.  And bake with love.

RECIPE from Food Network:
Ingredients
​4 eggs
4 1/2 ounces caster sugar (superfine), plus 3 tablespoons for sprinkling or use icing sugar (confectioners'), for dusting
2 tablespoons warm water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 1/2 ounces all-purpose flour
For the filling6 tablespoons raspberry or strawberry jam
8 ounces heavy cream, whipped

FULL Recipe and directions:
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/swiss-roll-2012199?soc=sharepin
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