WHAT IS REQUIRED
Sponge cake recipe adapted from:Yummy chocolate log | BBC Good Food
Servings: a 9” log cake
Sponge cakes:
- 90 grams of self raising flour
- 90 grams of brown sugar
- 3 eggs
- 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon of instant coffee granules
Fillings and frostings
- 1 cup of fresh whipping cream
- 1/2 cup of icing sugar
- 1.5 teaspoons of instant coffee granules.
- 50 grams of melted dark chocolate (not in picture)
STEPS OF PREPARATION
- Pre-heat the oven to 180 degree Celsius and line the a 6” x 9” Swiss roll baking tin with baking paper.
- Beat the eggs and brown sugar at high speed until volume expands to at least twice and become light and pale. Sift in the coffee granules, cocoa powder and self raising flour. Fold lightly and quickly until it is well mixed. Transfer the batter to the lined baking tin. Lightly knock the tin on the table top three times to force out any air trapped inside. Bake in the pre-heat oven of 180 degree Celsius for 10-15 minutes or until the top is dry.
- After taking out from the oven, take out from the baking tin. Use something to level the cake if necessary. Quickly turn the cake with the bottom of the cake facing you and placed the cake on top of the piece of baking paper dusted with icing sugar (optional to dust with icing sugar).. Tear off the first piece of baking paper. Take the width of the cake and roll the cake (like the way of rolling the Sushi) and make sure that the ending portion is facing downwards. Let it cool completely in this position. (Note that it is important that you do this as soon as the cake is out of oven and as soon as your hand can handle the heat from the cake. You can use a towel to roll together if you want. When the cake dries up, it will be difficult to roll.)
- While the cake is resting, prepare the fillings and frosting. Mix one to two tablespoons of fresh whipping cream with the instant coffee granules. Stir until dissolved. Beat the cold whipping cream until it starts to thicken and volumes starts to expand. Add icing sugar tablespoon by tablespoon, followed by the dissolved coffee cream . Beat until the cream reached a stiff peak. (Please keep an eye on the beating process and in the event that you have overbeaten the cream (whereby the fats separated and floated on some water), try adding some more cold cream and continue to whip so as to salvage the situation. Unroll the cool sponge cake and spread generously a thick layer (about 1/2 of the beaten cream) of beaten coffee cream on it.
- Carefully roll back the sponge such that it is in a log shape. For the remaining cream, add the melted chocolate (melted chocolate should be cool but yet to harden and you can melt the chocolate by microwave for 30 seconds or over the stove over a pot of hot boiling water), quickly use a spatula to fold it until well mixed. Spread generously the chocolate cream on both sides of the log ends and log trunks. Use a fork to lightly make some horizontal lines on the trunks and circular lines on the log ends.
- Decorated your cake with your desired Christmas ornaments such as Santa Clause, pine tree, mushrooms, reindeer etc.. and dust sparingly with icing sugar resembling snowfall. Chilled the cake if the frosting is too soft and cut into 2 cm thick pieces for servings.
Note:
- It does not matter if your basic sponge cake is ugly as it will be fully covered with coffee cream. It also does not matter if you cream and frosting is smooth as after drawing lines with forks, it will have a natural tree bark look… I have used less chocolate in this illustration so the colour is a bit light. You final log cake should have a darker and more appealing colour.
