Chocolate Swiss Roll (Turnin’ 31!)

My mom and I whipped up this cake the night before my birthday. We decorated a slice with candles and  sprinkles in the morning and all sampled it. (My mom is down with dessert for breakfast always. She’s an inspiration!)

And just like that, I’m 31. While so much is great, things can still feel weird right?! Let’s all try to accept our lives for what’s up. Because so much is beautiful and I can rest at ease that I am pretty good at salads, and have a pup who I love and lady friends who make me a better person every day!

And here’s my birthday in a list: honey toast, Supino pizza, mani (inspired by this one), nap, lotsa cocktails, lamb ragu, a horse sweater and more. It was a fun day, but I can’t wait for January 1st! Let’s get this year over with, right?!

Oh! This cake is really good! I wanna make it again and again to practice rollin’. My mom is the  one who rolled this one. She has more cake confidence than I do.

Chocolate Swiss Roll
Recipe from Betty Crocker

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 1 t baking powder
• 1/4 t salt
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 t vanilla
• whipped cream or swiss meringue buttercream (recipe below)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 375F. Line a jelly roll pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil and spray with cooking spray. In a medium bowl whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt).
2. In a large bowl beat the eggs for about 5 minutes. Gradually beat in sugar. On a low speed beat in water and vanilla. Gradually add dry ingredients. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 12-15 minutes.
3. Loosen cake, invert onto a clean powdered sugar covered tea towel. Carefully remove foil/parchment. While hot, roll cake and towel from narrow end. Cool on a wire rack.
4. Unroll cake, remove towel, spread with swiss meringue buttercream ( or whipped cream). Roll back up, chill and slice.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Recipe + tips from Whisk-Kid

Ingredients:

• 5 large egg whites
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 t vanilla

Directions:

1. Whisk the egg whites and sugar together in the bowl of your stand mixer or another bowl that’s heat proof. Place bowl over a pot of simmering water (double-boiler style) and whisk constantly until sugar is dissolved. It takes about 5 minutes. You can test whether the sugar is dissolved by sticking your finger in the mixture and seeing if it’s grainy or not. When it’s no longer grainy remove from the double boiler.
2. Beat on high speed using your stand mixer or an electric hand mixer for 10-15 minutes, or until the egg white mixture has turned into meringue and has increased in volume and is marshmallowy and glossy. The bottom of the bowl should be room temperature by this time.
3. At this point start adding the butter, 1 tablespoon at a time. Waiting until the butter is incorporated before adding more. If it helps, count to 15 between adding the butter.
4. Once all the butter is added keep whipping until nice and smooth and fabulous, only a couple minutes more. Add the vanilla and mix until combined. If it gets curdled-looking, just keep whipping and it’ll smooth out. If it gets too runny, refrigerate for about 15 minutes and then keep whipping.

Yay! Click HERE for a printable pdf of the recipe above.

Life has looked like this lately but with lots of naps and stuff too.