I had great hopes for my baking bucket list roll cake but it didn’t turn out quite as planned. Read on to find out why.
Update on November 27, 2109: I remade the roll cake a few days after this initial blog post. You can find the full recipe for my pumpkin spice cake with brown butter bourbon frosting and salted caramel pecans on this blog post. Enjoy!
If you aren’t familiar with a roll cake, it’s a cake that’s made with a very pliable sponge that’s been filled with a frosting or whipped cream then rolled around itself. The technique is of medium difficulty with hiccups usually only occurring if the cake cracks after rolling. The cracks are really more dependent on the cake recipe itself and the temperature of the cake once rolled rather than the skill of the baker.
My first (and only!) roll cake memory is of making a jellyroll cake with my grandma one summer. I have no idea why she wanted to make a roll cake with me but she did. While the actual process of making the cake with her is a loss, I do remember we made a vanilla-butter sponge filled with her homemade strawberry jam. A simple, classic jellyroll flavor.
Since I had only ever ‘made’ one in my lifetime, I thought adding a roll cake to my 2019 baking bucket list would be a great way to revisit this classic cake.
Autumn flavors to die for
My plan for the roll cake was to make a pumpkin cake rolled with a bourbon brown butter frosting and salted caramel pecans for crunch. I knew the flavors would result in a salty, sweet, warm combination and I was excited to make it, hoping the bourbon and salted caramel would be flavor <3M could enjoy.
Last-minute decisions
I set off on Sunday morning to make my roll cake and at the last minute, chose to up the ante a bit and added an inlay to my cake plan. An inlay roll cake results in a beautiful cake with a delicate, intricate pattern that’s baked straight into the cake itself displayed only after properly rolled.
Since we’re heading into Thanksgiving, I chose a detailed autumn foliage pattern with colorful leaves and acorns as my inlay. The technique requires you to first stencil out a pattern, color the cake batter, pipe into the bottom of a parchment-lined jellyroll pan then freeze the pattern in place.
Why you dry-roll the cake
Once frozen, you pour the remaining cake batter into the pan and bake as normal. As soon as the cake’s finished baking you must immediately prepare to flip the cake out of the pan onto a confectioner’s sugar covered tea towel (to avoid the cake sticking to itself) and ‘dry-roll’ the cake. Dry-rolling the cake allows the sponge set into the rolled pattern without it’s filling since the cake it most pliable when it’s warm. The dry-rolled cake is then chilled in the fridge for a few hours, unrolled, filled, and rolled up again to complete the look.
Double flips are required for inlay cakes
However, with an inlay cake, your cake pattern is on the bottom of the cake, so when you flip it out after baking, the pattern is on top. If the pattern is on top and you attempt to roll it, the pattern will be on the inside of your cake, not the outside.
To get the pattern on the outside you must then perform a second flip.
This is where I messed up. I missed my second flip. I was so excited about flipping my cake out without breaking and seeing the bright red, orange and yellow pattern that I never flipped the cake a second time. If I had performed the second flip, the pattern would be on the bottom, and as I rolled it would have been displayed outward.
This is where I should have flipped the cake again. The design should be facing down toward the counter prior to rolling so when it’s rolled, the design is on the outside instead of the inside
What I should have done after realizing my mistake
After chilling the cake for two hours, it dawned on me that I had missed my second flip. Heartbroken, I unrolled my cake, attempted to re-roll it so the pattern was on the outside — which obviously resulted in cracks then hastily filled and re-rolled the cake.
The result was a treacherous ugly cake. Sloppy filling, a loose role, and a cracked topped with snippets of orange and red peeking out from the forgotten inlay.
We ate it anyway
While as ugly as the cake was, we ate it anyway because I KNEW it was delicious. And it was. If there was one highlight from this cake, it was definitely the flavor.
The final, ugly roll cake
Will I make it again?
I’m debating whether or not I’ll attempt the inlay cake again prior to Thanksgiving or chalk it up to lesson learned and punch out the next bucket list bake (which was to revisit my failed lattice-topped pie from July for Thanksgiving dinner). I have a few days to think about it.