Gluten-Free Chocolate & Raspberry Roulade

This is definitely not the quickest cake in the world, but I’ve never made a swiss roll or roulade before so it was interesting to give it a go. I learned two things, first, there is no butter or oil in roulade (until you ram it full of cream of course!) – there is chocolate in this one, but you can make it without. Secondly, its really easy. Just not so quick. But that might be me.

Here is how you make it – you will need a 33cm x 23cm (13in x 9in) Swiss roll tin.

Ingredients

• 175g/6oz plain chocolate, broken into pieces
• 175g/6oz caster sugar
• 6 eggs, separated
• 2 level tbsp cocoa, sieved

For the filling

• 300ml/10fl oz double cream
• 3tbsp raspberry jam

For the Chocolate Sauce:

• 100g chocolate
• 200ml double cream

Method

1. Lightly grease the Swiss roll tin and line with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

2. Melt the chocolate slowly in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Allow to cool slightly.

3. Place the sugar and egg yolks in a bowl and whisk with an electric whisk until light and creamy. Add the cooled chocolate and stir until evenly blended.

4. Whisk the egg whites in a large mixing bowl until stiff. Stir a large spoonful of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, then fold in the remaining egg whites and the cocoa.

5. Pour into the prepared tin and give it a wobble to level the top. Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes until firm to the touch. Remove from the oven, leave in the tin to cool for a few minutes, then flip it out onto some cling film. Roll it up, incorporating the cling film as you go. Leave to cool completely. This will help the cake to not crack when wrapped with the cream.

6. meanwhile, whip the cream until it just holds its shape. Once the cake has cooled, unwrap it and spread the jam and cream on top. Roll it back up, this time without the clingfilm!

7. Finally, make the chocolate sauce. This is so easy, simply heat the chocolate in a glass bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. When it starts to melt, add the cream then stir until it has all melted and combined. When you are ready to serve the roulade, pour the sauce on top. Delicious!

Coconut & Raspberry Cake

My littlest button, Lilah, turned into a 1-year-old last week. Insert boring clichés about how time has flew (it really has) and how I’ve loved every minute of her little life so far (night times not so much. She’s nocturnal). Anyway, I had the family coming round to celebrate so I thought I’d make a nice cake. I went for a recipe I found in Peyton & Byrne’s fabulous British Baking Book – it is a recipe for cupcakes so I doubled it, extended the cooking time and added fresh coconut and jam.

Ingredients:

• 200g softened unsalted butter
• 250g caster sugar
• 300g self raising flour
• 4 eggs
• 120g low fat natural yoghurt
• 400g raspberries
• 60g desiccated coconut
• 4 tbsp raspberry jam

For the icing:

• 230g caster sugar
• 350g unsalted butter, softened
• 4 egg whites
• 100ml coconut milk, shaken
• fresh grated coconut to decorate (about 1/3 coconut), or dessicated*

Method

1. preheat the oven to 170 degrees and line 2 x 20cm cake tins with baking parchment. As a brief tangent… I recently discovered how to line a tin A LOT quicker. So I’m sharing it, in case you don’t know yourself. All you do is fold up a piece of parchment bigger than the tin (fold in half, in half again, then in half again on the diagonal to get a triangle). Cut the triangle so that it is half the diameter of the tin, roughly. When you open it up you will have a tin sized circle! Okay, back to the recipe…

  

2. Cream together the butter and caster sugar, then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Sieve in the flour and add the yoghurt and desiccated coconut, then lightly mix.

3. Drop a dozen raspberries into each tin, then distribute the mixture between the two tins. Bake for around 25 minutes, or until golden brown and springy.

4. To make the icing, put the sugar and egg whites into a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Heat until the granules have dissolved into a thickened syrup, about 10 minutes. When the mixture has cooled, beat for about 10 minutes until it forms soft peaks. Add the butter, bit by bit, mixing well.

5. Put about a third of the icing on the top of one of the cakes, then gently spread the jam over the top. Put the other cake on top and cover the entire thing with the rest of the icing.

 

6. Grate the coconut, if you are using fresh (massively regretted this), see below*. Sprinkle on top of the cake and decorate with a few extra raspberries.

 

The coconut in the cake mix gives it a lovely moist texture (ugh, moist). Yummy. Look how happy she is with it. Or maybe that was the sparkler!

Tia x

*on the fresh coconut… In my opinion, life is too short to smash, peel and grate a coconut. It was Delia’s idea, she said it would be easy. Coconut is hard to smash open, I cut my finger trying to prize it out the shell, and it does NOT grate easily. It took me about an hour and I was cursing Delia all night. I missed the Sewing Bee and it put me in a very bad mood!