Chocolate-Peppermint Cream Roll

Ingredients:

Deep baking sheet 

Parchment paper

For the sponge cake batter:

3 eggs

3 tablespoons hot water

150 g sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla sugar or 1 package vanilla sugar 

100 g all-purpose wheat flour 

25 g starch (potato)

25 g cocoa powder 

1 teaspoon baking powder 

For the filling:

400 g (1 pint) heavy whipping cream

1 package Andes peppermint chocolate mints

Decoration:

1-2 chocolate mints or some chocolate shavings 

Some mint leaves

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius (375 F).

2. Whisk eggs and hot water on highest setting for about 1 minute using an electric hand mixer. Add vanilla sugar or extract, then slowly pour in sugar while whisking. After adding the sugar keep whisking for another 2 minutes. Mix flour, starch, baking powder and cocoa; sift mixtures and add in three portions to batter, briefly mix in on lowest setting.

3. Line baking sheet with parchment paper, fold parchment paper around edges if necessary. Spread batter on parchment paper. Bake batter at 200 degrees Celsius (375 F) for about 10 minutes.

4. In the meantime, sprinkle some sugar on top of a kitchen towel. Immediately after removing sponge cake from oven place cake upside down on kitchen towel, remove parchment paper from back and roll up the sponge cake starting from the longer side. Let cool down rolled up.

5. Prepare filling: in a stovetop pot warm up the whipping cream and melt the peppermint chocolate mints in it. When chocolate is fully melted chill cream in refrigerator until cold.

6. Whip cream until stiff (you should be able to tilt the bowl or even put it upside down without the cream to slide out).

7. Carefully open the chocolate sponge roll. Use 2/3 of the cream to fill the chocolate sponge, then roll up again. Put about 3 tablespoons of the cream and set aside. Spread the remaining cream over the top of the sponge roll. Decorate the roll with the remaining cream using a piping bag. Sprinkle some chocolate shavings over top, decorate with some mint leaves.

8. Chill cream roll for at least three hours prior to serving.

Comments:

1. Traditionally one would use "After Eight" thin mints. Since I had a hard time finding this I used Andes thin mints instead.

2. I usually use potato starch for baking, but this time I used corn starch. I'm not sure if I hesitated for too long after removing the cake from the oven, if the oven wasn't at the right temperature, or if it was the cornstarch, but the roll broke twice when I was rolling it up. That hasn't happened to me so far, so I'm not yet sure what caused it.

Snowcake (Schneetorte or Kirschbaiser)

The original recipe for this cake uses a filling of gooseberries; however, I've never seen gooseberries in the US, so I used sour cherries instead. Although I don't know where the name comes from I can imagine the following explanation: The cake contains a yellow cake batter, which is overlayed with an airy and light meringue layer. The meringue is fluffy and crunchy like snow, so I could imagine that this is why the cake is named snowcake.

Ingredients:

2 Springformboden

Some grease

For the meringue:

3 egg whites

150 g sugar 

For the cake batter:

75 g (3/4 stick) butter or margarine 

75 g sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 package vanilla sugar 

1 pinch of salt 

3 egg yolks

100 g all-purpose wheat flour

1/2 leveled teaspoon baking powder

Topping:

75 g slivered almonds 

Filling:

1 jar sour cherries (Morello cherries from Trader Joe's)

1 package Vanilla JELL-O cook and serve or 1 package vanilla pudding powder

400 g whipping cream 

2 tablespoons sugar

Preparation:

1. Grease the bottom of the springform baking pans. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (or 350 F).

2. Prepare meringue: Whisk egg whites until stiff peaks appear. In portions, slowly whisk in sugar. You have to go so slowly that you're not destroying the structure of the egg whites.

3. Prepare batter: Whisk butter or margarine until smooth and soft. Add sugar and vanilla extract or vanilla sugar and salt and whisk until sugar has dissolved (no crunch noise). Whisk in egg yolks, one at a time. Mix flour and baking powder, sift and add in two portions to cake batter.

4. Divide cake batter in half and spread on springform bottoms. Now divide meringue and spread on top of cake batter, sprinkle almonds on top. Enclose springform bottoms with edge and bake each cake layer for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius (or 350 F).

5. After removing cakes from oven immediately remove springform edge and let's cake layers cool down.

6. Prepare filling: Add cherries and juice to a stovetop pot. Add vanilla JELL-O cook and serve or vanilla pudding. While stirring bring to a boil, the remove from heat and let cool down. Whip cream with sugar until stiff.

7. Spread cooled cherry mixture on top of one cake layer, the spread whipped cream on top of cherries.

8. Cut the second cake layer into as many pieces as you want (usually 12-16). Put the pieces on top of the whipped cream. Chill cake for at least 1 h prior to serving.

Comments:

1. I only have a springform set with three different sizes. I used the large and the middle one for the cake layers. I spread the cherries and cream on top of the large sized bottom because whenever you try to assemble a cut layer on top of a cake you can never get the pieces so close together as an intact layer. So it turns out perfect with two different sized cake pans.

2. For a non traditional version you can certainly prepare this cake with other berries (raspberries or blueberries might go nicely).