Gingerbread Cake Roulade

By: Pete on 08:35:00

This was more of a tester for a bigger cake...a competition at work next week. I wanted to do a gingerbread flavoured sponge, and then I needed an icing to decorate it. I then went out a bit more, added a curd, and also some candied peel.

Overall it worked really well...I slightly over-filled it  with icing, so the roll is a bit rubbish, but otherwise it looked and tasted great. I now have a good idea about how I'll approach the main cake next week, which was the primary goal for this.

Gingerbread Cake Roulade - Recipe

• Pre-heat oven to 200'C
• Grease and line a swiss roll tin with baking parchment

Sponge Recipe

The base sponge was my fatless sponge recipe, with 10g of flour replaced with;

• 6g ground ginger
• 2g cinnamon
• 2g ground nutmeg
• 2g ground cloves

The caster sugar was replaced with dark muscavado sugar as well, and this gives teh sponge a deeper, richer flavour.

Orange Curd Recipe

I made up an orange curd, using my lemon curd recipe as a base, with the following replacements;

• 60g of orange juice (instead of lemon juice)
• Zest of 2 large oranges (rather than 3 lemons)

Chocolate Meringue Buttercream Ingredients

• 3 egg whites
• 150g icing sugar
• 300g butter (room temperature)
• 150g 70% chocolate
• 25g cocoa powder

 Note - I should probably write this up as a "Basic" receipe, as it's basically my go-to recipe for decorating. It's nice and light, and sets quite firmly for decorating purposes...

1) Quarter-fill a large saucepan with water, and place over a medium heat until it simmers

2) Break the chocolate up into a heatproof bowl, and place over the simmering pan of water (but not touching the water)

3) Stir until just melted

4) Place the chocolate to one side to cool (but remain liquid)

5) Place the egg whites and sugar in a large heatproof bowl and place over the simmering water (but again not touching)

6) Using an electric hand whisk, beat until stiff, glossy paks are formed

7) Place the meringue to one side to cool

8) Place the butter and cocoa in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment

9) Beat until very soft, you may need to scrape the sides down a couple of times

10) Fold in the cooled meringue until no while lumps are left

11) Fold in the melted chocolate

12) Transfer to a piping bag with a large, plain nozzle (this makes it fill the swiss roll)

Candied Peel Ingredients

I followed this recipe, which worked well. It was a fairly simple process, but time consuming, nad in future I'll do this well in advance. In total this took about 2 hours to produce some candied peel...mainly the simmering and drying phases...the actual prep took about 5 minutes!

White Chocolate Ganache

• 50g white cooking chocolate
• 25g double cream

1) Place the chocolate and cream in a small heatproof bowl

2) Microwave for 10 seconds, then stir vigorously

3) Repeat until a smooth mixture is formed...this took 3 heat cycles, and it was ready to apply to the cake almost immediately.

Assembly

1) Take the pre-rolled sponge, and open up carefully

2) Spread the inside surface generously with the curd

3) Pipe a layer of the buttercream on top, and spread out with a pallette knife

4) Re-roll the sponge, and trim the ends to make a neat roll

5) Chill in the fridge for 10 minutes

6) Pour the ganache on top, and encourage it to drip in a few places

7) Place some candied peel on top to decorate