Mint Chocolate Flake Swiss Roll – #GreatBloggersBakeOff2014 Week 1

It’s back!!! I have been looking forward to the return of the Great British Bake Off and so, also, the Great Bloggers Bake Off since the finale last year. I love trying new things and sharing the fun (and failures) as we go along.

Nothing like starting with an adventure as I chose to make my first ever Swiss Roll for Cake Week. I didn’t really fancy making the cherry cake as I’m not a massive fruit cake fan (though I probably am a massive fruit cake, perhaps that’s why – cannibalism doesn’t sit well…) and as for 36 identical mini cakes – I can’t even make an identical batch of 12 cupcakes…

So Swiss Roll it was, and when it comes to Swiss Roll I almost always think of the ones my Grandma used to make, usually at Christmas. They were dark chocolate with a zingy green mint cream filling and, best of all, there was always a Cadbury’s Flake down the middle – sadly as Grandma got older and people started convincing her that sugar was the mother of all evils the Swiss Rolls started to be a bit less sweet and slightly more accident prone. Culminating in one year where Grandma forgot to take the greaseproof paper out of the middle of the roll before she put the cream in and rolled it up. That made it a touch chewier and more interesting to eat.

I used Grandma’s Swiss Roll as a model for my bake and though I did have a few incidents, I managed to at least remember to take off the greaseproof paper 😉

Mint Chocolate Flake Swiss Roll

Ingredients:

4 Eggs

110g Caster Sugar

50g Self-Raising Flour

25g Cocoa Powder (or Hot Chocolate powder if you can’t find your Cocoa Powder like me…) plus extra for dusting

Vanilla (either a few drops of extract or seeds from a pod or about 3 twists on a grinder)

Vanilla Butter Icing (I had a batch in the freezer left over from Tori’s birthday cake)

105g Bar of Aero Mint Bubbly

8 squares of dark baking chocolate

1 Cadbury’s Flake

Hershey’s Chocolate Sauce/Squirty Cream for decorating (optional)

 

Method:

1. Line a shallow baking tray/swiss roll tin with greaseproof paper and set your oven to preheat at 190·C
2. Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla until pale, fluffy and thick.
3. Sift over the flour and cocoa powder and gently fold through the egg mixture.
4. Pour the batter onto the baking tray and tilt gently to get it evenly spread without bashing any air out of it.
5. Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes until dark golden brown and springy to the touch.
6. Immediately turn the cake out onto a second sheet of greaseproof paper dusted with cocoa powder and/or icing sugar and gently remove original sheet of greaseproof paper from the sponge.
7. Carefully roll the still hot sponge using the second sheet of greaseproof paper to stop it sticking to itself and leave to cool whilst you make your filling.
8. Melt the Aero bar and dark chocolate in a plastic bowl in the microwave (or in a glass bowl above gently boiling water).
9. Mix the melted chocolate evenly through the vanilla butter icing.
10. Once your sponge is cool, gently unroll it again.
11. Using a tiny dab of icing, stick the flake on one of the short edges of your sponge before spreading buttercream over the rest of the sponge.
12. Starting with the flake end, gently re-roll the sponge around the filling.
13. Using a sharp knife, trim the ends to make the flake visible at either end of the roll.
14. Decorate as desired – I used Hershey’s chocolate sauce, squirty cream and a crumbled Flake bar on mine.

Hopefully your baking will be smoother than mine – I managed to not fold my flour and cocoa through properly and when I poured the mixture into the tin it all appeared dry in a big bubble in the middle so I had to try and carefully stir it in on the baking tray! I don’t think I did it evenly as when I got it out, one end of the sponge was effectively a chocolate flavoured omelette. I simply cut that bit off and just used the rest which is my excuse as to why I don’t have much of a swirl – I had three inches less cake than I was meant to!

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