5th Anniversary Wooden Log Celebration Cake

The theme for a fifth wedding anniversary is wood so when my husband and I were celebrating that particular milestone recently I decided to make a cake based on the theme. There are a lot of ways you could interpret ‘wood’ - after all a lot of different things are made of wood - but to me the obvious choice was a woodland theme and a wooden tree stump!

This cake has vertical layers running through it which makes it a bit different - because it’s actually a Swiss roll cake on its side!

The recipe and general design came from a blog called Top with Cinnamon. It’s actually very easy to make this delicious cake - you make two Swiss rolls, cut them vertically so you have four strips, and roll them all up around each other with frosting in between. 

I didn’t make the coffee frosting in this recipe and instead added some cocoa powder as I wanted my daughter to have it and she’s too young for coffee (and probably wouldn’t like the taste anyway). I spread the ganache around the outside and on top and marked it with a fork to look like a tree trunk.

If I had more time to decorate I would have made woodland creatures out of icing but instead I used some mushroom shaped sweets (you can get these in most grocery shops) and made a ladybird, leaves and some tiny flowers out of icing (a flower plunger cutter made that last part very easy). Finally I added a ‘happy anniversary’ cake pick.

You can see the vertical layers when you slice into the cake - overall I’m really pleased with how the cake matches our anniversary theme!

Less Sinful Chocolate Yule Log or Swss Roll

As a lot of people – myself included – are on a health kick this month, I thought I’d share a recipe for a slightly less sinful chocolate yule log I made to take to a friend’s house at Christmas. It comes from Lorraine Pascale’s book ‘A lighter way to bake’ and the recipe can be found here.

 

I didn’t feel the need to use the milk in the chocolate ganache; it would have thinned it quite a lot and I was worried it wouldn’t set, though in fact I also forgot to put the icing sugar into the ganache. So mine was just made of chocolate and low far cream cheese, which did taste really nice – like Chocolate Philadelphia if you’ve had that!

Mixing the dry ingredients for the cake

 

Adding the wet ingredients

Spread onto a Swiss roll tin

Just out of the oven

Spreading the ganache on top

Rolled up and covered with more ganache

I didn’t decorate the yule log as I made it the day before I needed to take it to my friend’s and was worried about any decorations going too soft or sinking in, as Lorraine’s recipe says to serve immediately. But I kept it in the fridge overnight and it was really good even if the presentation doesn't look all that great (it's rustic!).

 

The coffee in the cake is detectable but not overpowering and it was nice to feel that this dessert wasn’t as calorific as a traditional yule log!

I'm sharing this with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I run with Ros of the More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter I have chosen this month is Y. Strictly speaking this is a Yule log though you could serve it as a Swiss roll any time of year.

I'm also sending this to Love Cake, hosted by JibberJabber UK as her theme, 'a month of cake' will accept any cake entries.

 

Decorated Salted Caramel Arctic Roll

Arctic Rolls were very exciting when I was a child - a rare combination of ice cream and cake that we had as an occasional treat. I haven't eaten it for years - possibly since I was a child - and I've never tried to make one before. But after seeing some beautiful and elaborate arctic rolls on the Great British Bake Off this year I decided I wanted to have a go at baking a cake with the decoration on the outside.

I was also sent some vouchers for Haagen Dazs ice cream recently and made this amazing dessert; I had one voucher left to use and an arctic roll seemed the perfect idea.

Making the Swiss roll part was very easy; I then looked up online how to do the decoration on the outside which I changed slightly and then used a much better alternative than the traditional jam between the sponge and the ice cream - dulce de leche caramel! So I guess I can call this

Decorated Salted Caramel Arctic Roll - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

For the cake:
3 eggs
100g caster sugar
100g self-raising flour

For the decoration on the outside:
1 egg white
20g cocoa powder
20g plain flour
30g caster sugar
30g softened butter or marg

For the filling:
half a tin of Carnation caramel or dulce de leche
500ml tub Haagen Dazs salted caramel ice cream

First prepare the decoration to go on the outside of the cake. Mix all the ingredients together to make a thick paste and spoon into a piping bag (you don't need a nozzle). Line a Swiss roll tin or baking tray with baking paper. Snip the end of the piping bag off so you can pipe a thin line and pipe swirls or whatever patterns you like all over the baking paper.

Put in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile cream the eggs and sugar together for the cake and fold in the flour. When you are ready to take the decorated baking parchment out of the freezer, pour over the cake mixture and bake in the oven for about 15 mins.

Allow to cool; meanwhile take the ice cream out of the freezer. I took mine out a bit early and it melted more than I expected which made it a bit messy when I came to assemble the arctic roll so you are better off leaving the ice cream solid frozen.

One reason I used Haagen Dazs is that the ice cream comes in a carboard tub - you need the ice cream to be a tube shape and there are various recipes online showing how you melt the ice cream, fill a metal tube with the ice cream and refreeze it, but that all looked very complicated. With a cardboard ice cream tub that is a cylinder shape, you can just cut it off and the ice cream is ready to use!



Normally you would spread jam inside the arctic roll but I used Carnation Caramel from a tin which went perfectly with the salted caramel flavour ice cream.  I wrapped the cake spread with the caramel around the ice cream - you can see the pretty decoration on the outside - and sliced it up to serve. A lovely festive dessert!

This recipe uses eggs so I'm sharing it with Simply Eggcellent hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.

Pionono Dulce de Leche

As the World Cup is taking place at the moment I have been looking for recipes from the different nations taking part. I looked on Google for Argentinian recipes and found Pionono Dulce de Leche, a kind of Swiss roll with a caramel filling, which I thought looked really nice.

In the past I've bought a tin of Carnation Dulce de Leche when I've needed it for a recipe, but my small local supermarkets don't stock it. They only have condensed milk, but I discovered from the internet that you can actually make your own Dulce de Leche from condensed milk - all you really need to do is cook it until it thickens.

There are various ways to do it. There is the oven method: pour the tin of condensed milk into an oven proof dish and cover it with foil, then place that dish in a roasting tray and pour in hot water so it comes half way up the side of the pan. Bake it at 200C for anywhere between an hour and an hour and a half, topping up the water if necessary. 

The pan method: take the label off the tin and use a corkscrew or similar to make three holes in the top of the can, spaced evenly apart. Put the tin in a saucepan and fill with water three quarters of the way up the sides of the can. Bring to the boil then simmer for 4 hours. Allow to cool before opening the tin.

The microwave method: this is what I did as it is by far the quickest, though you will get a more lumpy texture; it's fine once you whisk it though. Pour the condensed milk into a microwave-proof dish and cover with cling film, then cook on medium for 2 minutes at a time, stirring each time, until the mixture has thickened - I found it took about 8 minutes but it will depend on the power of your microwave.

I used a recipe from About.com for the cake. I didn't make the caramel frosting though due to lack of time. I also didn't have any cream so rather than mixing the dulce de leche with cream for the filling, I used it as it was.

You need:
4 eggs, separated
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
3/4 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup dulce de leche

Line a Swiss roll pan with greaseproof paper and preheat the oven to 180C. Separate the eggs and whip the egg whites in a bowl until you have soft peaks. Add 1/4 cup of the sugar to the egg whites and beat until stiff peaks form. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks with the remaining sugar until pale and tripled in volume. Add the vanilla. Fold the dry ingredients into the egg yolk mixture then fold in the egg whites. Spread into the Swiss roll tin.

Bake for 10 minutes then turn out the cake onto a clean tea towel or another piece of greaseproof paper and peel off the greaseproof paper from the back of the cake.

Allow to cool, then unroll, spread with the dulce de leche and roll back up.

 Slice to serve. I left mine a bit too long before I tried to roll it up so it broke up a bit! It tasted good though I found the cake part had a slightly grainy texture I assume from the ground almonds and next time I would be tempted to leave that out and use more flour. The homemade dulce de leche was very good!

The letter I have chosen for Alphabakes this month is D, and since dulce de leche is the main ingredient in this cake I am including it in the roundup.

I'm also sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World for his World Cup blogging challenge.

Slimming World-style Low Fat Chocolate Swiss Roll

 Members of my Slimming World group have been raving about a "half syn cake" for ages; it's so low in fat that is is half a syn for the entire cake. The cake doesn't use any flour or butter so it comes out very flat, so I had the idea of rolling it up to make a Swiss roll. I thought it would be much nicer as a chocolate Swiss roll so I added cocoa powder, which is 1 syn per level tablespoon. I used two in the cake and one in the filling, meaning this whole cake worked out at 3.5 syns, or just over half a syn a slice as I cut it into six pieces.

You need:
4 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tub Quark
3 tbsp cocoa powder
4 tbsp Splenda or other sugar-free sweetener

Preheat oven to 180C. Separate the eggs and whisk the whites until you have soft peaks.

 In another bowl, mix the eggs with 2 tbsp Splenda, half the tub of quark and the baking powder and 2 tbsp cocoa powder.

Mix well and fold into the egg whites.

Line a Swiss roll or shallow baking tin with greaseproof paper and spray with Fry Light, then pour over the cake mixture.

Bake for 20 minutes then allow to cool. When cool, turn over and remove the baking paper.

Mix the remaining cocoa powder and sweetener into the rest of the quark.

Spread over the cooled cake

And roll up to make a Swiss roll.

Slice to serve. It doesn't look all that amazing but it's a decent cake for only half a syn a slice. My boyfriend even enjoyed it and asked for second helpings, which means it's definitely as good as a non-Slimming World cake!

I'm sending this to the One Ingredient Challenge, hosted by Nazima at Franglais Kitchen and Laura at How To Cook Good Food, as the theme this month is healthy recipes.

The Four Seasons Food Challenge, hosted by Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux, is themed around healthy or virtuous recipes as well this month so I am sending over my low fat Swiss roll.

The star ingredient of this month's Tea Time Treats is egg, and since eggs are one of the only things in this cake I think it's perfect! The challenge is hosted by Janie at the Hedgecombers on behalf of Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked.