One of our best friends, M is a frequent traveller, a bonafide jetsetter. We hardly get to see him so when he’s back in town recently and called us up for dinner at his place, I decided to make a jam sponge roll to bring over as dessert.
The recipe has not an ounce of fat in it so it’s perfect for fitness nut M as well as my BF and myself, whose habits of overindulging are starting to take its toll on our physiques…
# – Strawberry chocolate sponge roll.
I couldn’t help but sneak in some dark chocolates though for a bit of a crunch but hey it’s dark chocolates so they’re healthy! ;)
For the sponge:
- 120 ml of flour
- 100 ml of granulated sugar, divided into half
- 5 eggs, whites and yolks separated
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
- 2 tablespoons of icing sugar
For the filling:
- 100grams of good quality strawberry jam
- 20 grams of dark chocolate, broken into small pieces
Tools required:
- Baking tray (around the size of 9.5″ x 14″)
- Clean tea towel (same size with baking tray or more)
- Waxed/Non stick baking paper
# – First, whip up the egg whites till double in size then gradually add half of the granulated sugar (tablespoon by tablespoon) and continue whipping.
# – Till the egg whites turn fluffy and glossy like this. Set aside.
# – In another bowl, pour the rest of the sugar into egg yolks, then add a teaspoon of vanilla essence.
# – Beat the mixture at high speed.
# – After 5-8 minutes, you will notice that the colour has changed from bright orange to a really pale yellow, like this.
# – Now, turn the beater to the slowest and dump in all the flour. The mixture will get instantly thicker. Make sure all flour and egg yolk mixture are thoroughly combined.
# – Next, pour in the egg yolk + flour mixture into the beaten egg whites prepared earlier.
# – With a spatula, very gently mix everything till combined. Do not over-mix. As long as there’s no obvious streaks of white or beige colour is fine.
# – By now you should have a greased a baking tray and then lined it with waxed paper. Mine is 9.5″ x 14″. Pour the mixture in and spread evenly.
# – Till it looks like this.
# – Stick it in a preheated oven for 180 degrees celcius for 15 minutes.
# – While the sponge is baking in the oven, prepare a clean tea towel that is the size of your sponge or more. Dust icing sugar all over it.
# – After 15 minutes, take the sponge out of the oven. It should be evenly browned at the top.
# – Use a spatula and run it along the side to loosen the sponge from the waxed paper.
# – Then, carefully turn the entire sponge onto the tea towel, the crust facing downwards.
# – Carefully peel off the waxed paper and you will find a beautiful golden yellow sponge :)
# – Now, roll the towel together with the sponge. Please do this step, as it ensures the roll will not crack later.
# – It will look like this from the side. Now you know why you need a clean towel.
# – Leave the rolled up sponge & towel on a wire rack to cool down completely.
# – After about 30 minutes, unroll the sponge and towel. You will see it has developed a natural curve which is a good thing.
# – Now just dump the jam over the sponge and spread evenly with a spatula.
# – Put broken dark chocolate pieces at the bottom of the sponge. This step is not necessary but it does give the roll a nice chocolatey crunch ;)
# – And then you roll it up again, WITHOUT the towel!
# – Strawberry chocolate sponge roll, DONE!
# – Slice it up before serving.
The sponge is not too sweet as well as fluffy and soft. It’s important to use high quality vanilla essence, jam and chocolates otherwise it might have that unpleasant artificial taste.
It’s the first time I made sponge roll and I’m so glad it did not crack on the surface at all. It’s a basic sponge roll recipe so you can make it with different fillings. I even plan to use it as trifle sponge, teeheehee.
Now that I know this recipe is reliable, next time, I’m going to use cream cheese and dried fruits as a filling. I can’t wait!!! :D
looks delicious maxxxxx!! *_*
u make me hungry n wana eat swiss roll on this time!!!!
where to find swiss roll now ><
make one ah meow!!!
Lovely, light, fluffy, tasty and reasonably healthy too!
yeah…reasonably. hahaha
looks very professional, this one!
thank you!! much to improve on though :D
sweet tooth for the day
surprisingly not that sweet ;)
Looks perfect! can i have a slice?
thanks for the compliment :)
looks really good! oh, you can also use the recipe to make the pandan layer cake! just add pandan juice/paste into the mixture..
that’s a great idea! thank you!!
Omg Kimberly, you made that? I think I saw something like that in some famous bakery! When can i have a taste of it? Soon I hope. Lol!
ps: nice meeting you again tonight, may there be more! Woot!!
wahhhhh you’re flattering me! was nice meeting you again too! ;)
Hello THere
I wanna try making too!
The flour that you use if use plain flour ?
yes it’s just plain flour! good luck :D
This cake roll looks so fluffy and delicious! I love the filling of raspberry and chocolate, yum! Great step-by-step photos too, very helpful in making a roll!
thanks vicki! appreciate your comments :)
Hi, when you say ‘ml’ for flour and sugar, do you mean ‘g’? I am confused :) I will be trying this recipe tomorrow! looks amazing, but I will make it with cream and jam instead of chocolate.
Thank you! :)
Hi Amelia, I don’t mean weight. I mean the volume in millilitres, as I measured with a measuring jug. Good luck, do let me know how it goes! Cream and jam sounds awesome!
Thank you, I’ve tried it out but my flour mixture was too thick, so my batter came out not fluffy etc. Is there anything you can suggest that would have made it a little less thick? Maybe some milk? But apart from that, it tastes good! Just a little hard :)
hi amelia, the final batter should be thick almost foamy. i have a few speculations:
1. did you overbeat the egg whites? if you did, it would not be properly aerated hence the thicker batter. try adding one unbeaten egg white while beating the egg whites to offset the overbeaten consistency.
2. too much flour? as this is in volume measurement there might be some discrepancy. i find tapping the measuring cup till the surface of flour is flat and even helps.
3. is your oven too hot or did you leave the cake to cool down in the oven? every oven is different, it’s best to buy an external oven termometer. once i left my tarte tatin to cool down in the oven immediately after it finished baking, i ended up with a burnt tart. food continues to cook in a warm oven.
hope these help!
Hi Kimberly,
I went through your recipe again just now, and I realized I made a couple of mistakes when I attempted this the other day T.T
I did not beat the egg whites ENOUGH I think? I thought they were glossy enough, but coming back to it after setting it aside, the egg whites were still liquid at the bottom, fluffy foam on the top :(
However, for the egg yolk mixture, everything seemed fine till I added in the flour. After that the texture was soooooo sticky my beater kept getting stuck. It was whirring furiously but couldn’t really move properly.
I ended up with batter that had lumps of egg yolk mixture floating around in egg white liquid >.<
Needless to say, my sponge roll failed T.T
I'll try it again and let you know how it went!
Yeah…if the egg whites still in liquid form at the bottom it’s not beaten well enough :( good to move the bowl around while you’re beating.
I suspect you used too much flour as I used an ordinary liquid measuring jug to measure 120 ml of flour, that’s equivalent to 1/2 a cup or 63 grams of flour (you probably used about 120 grams of flour instead which was too much as liquid and powder volume is very different).
Hope this help, let me know how it goes!
Cheers!
Hi Kimberly,
I’ve always love your baking post :) I decided to try this sponge roll recipe recently but it didn’t turn out as expected, not really sure what went wrong. The top of the sponge cake was beautiful and looks nice and done,but it wasn’t browned and it sticks to my fingers when I touch it, and the bottom was burned! Is it because I didn’t use wax paper and didn’t dust icing sugar on the cloth? I used normal baking paper instead.
Would really appreciate if you can kindly advise.
Thank you! :)