You've gotta roll with it...

Yesterday, I forgot to buy eggs.  That made for a very Un-Happy Larder as it meant that I couldn't really do any baking or at least not what I had been planning to do.  But sometimes you just have to roll with it, don't you?  There were plenty of other things I could do and the eggs could wait.

Fast forward to later in the day and the Happy Larder was back to being cheerful again - the egg situation had been resolved and I could get on with making my cake: a Swiss Roll filled with strawberry jam and a bit of cream.  I had attempted this once before and it turned out horrible - it broke apart and the sponge was rock-solid.  Well, I found out later that my baking powder had been out of date...no wonder then!  See, things do go wrong at the Happy Larder...it's just that I prefer writing about the good stuff :-)  And good it was because this attempt worked out fine - I made a little photo guide... I hope you like it!  It was done using a website called Picmonkey that lets you do photo collages for free.

So, here we are: a super-easy but lovely cake to impress your family with.  It is so versatile as well - you can vary the filling pretty much according to what you have to hand.  How about adding cocoa powder to the sponge and filling the roll with cherries?  Or using apple lemon curd as per my post a while ago?  You can have it with or without the cream and have the whole thing done within 30 minutes... now, that's what I call an easy recipe! :-) 


Swiss Roll (serves 6)

Ingredients:

For the Swiss roll

3 free-range eggs

75g caster sugar

1 tsp baking powder

75g flour 

For the filling

75g jam

Optional: 100ml whipped cream

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C and and line a Swiss roll tin 23cm x 30cm (or any other fairly flat tin) with greaseproof paper.
2. Whisk the eggs and sugar in a bowl until pale and fluffy (I found it easiest to separate the eggs first, whisking the whites with the sugar, then adding the yolks).
3. Fold in the flour and baking powder and spoon the mixture into the lined tin. Bake in the oven for 7-10 minutes.
4. Place a piece of greaseproof paper on your work surface and sprinkle with sugar. 
5. Take the tin out of the oven and turn the sponge out onto the sugared piece of greaseproof paper.  Trim the edges if needed.
6. Spread the jam onto the sponge and then top with the cream (if using), leaving a small gap around the edges.
7. With the help of the paper, roll the sponge up tightly, creating a roll.  UPDATE:  please roll the sponge whilst still warm to avoid it cracking (thank you to my reader who pointed this out to me!)