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.