Chocolate Roulade

The technical challenge for the quarter finals of the Great British Bake Off last week was Mary Berry's chocolate roulade, which I was very happy about because I was thinking of making one anyway after I had come across the recipe.  I was glad as well that this recipe did not require any expensive or hard to find ingredients like last week's pork pies and I therefore had no trouble in locating all of the ingredients, most of which I had already.

From watching the episode it looked as though the recipe for the actual cake part of the roulade would be pretty easy, just lots of melting, whipping and folding and those are easy enough if you know how to do them.  The challenging part looked like the rolling up after the cake had baked and cooled down, since none of the contestants on the Bake Off seemed to get a roll that reached Mary Berry's high standards.  So, because I was worried that I would not get a good roll I took a picture of my roulade just before I rolled it.

Then for the challenging part.  To make sure my roulade did not stick to the greaseproof paper I put it on I had sprinkled it with icing sugar to make the rolling easier.  I then did what Mary suggested and cut a slit into the cake at the end nearest to me where I would start the rolling from.  I began to roll it up and, although it was cracking a bit on the top, this did not worry me because roulade is supposed to be a bit cracked.  When I finished the rolling, still holding my breath in anticipation, I lifted the roulade onto a chopping board and this is what it looked like.

At this point I was slightly disheartened because it looked a bit square and no cream had squeezed out of the ends but I was pleased that it at least had a sort of spiral shape.  I then thought that I should cut off the end so that you could see the cream coming through.

When I had done this I was crazily pleased and announced my victory over the roulade to both twitter and facebook because (though I had cut it quite badly and a bit is sort of falling off the right hand side) I had made what looked to me like a perfect spiral.  I also got to eat the end that I had cut off so I was pretty happy about that too.  I did take a picture before scoffing it though.

If you are someone like me who gets much too excited over baking and want to have your own victory over the chocolate roulade then here is a link for the recipe. http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chocolate_roulade_79152