Madhouse recipe : Polka Dot Swiss Roll

As I told you earlier in the week, I've been having great fun (and a few hair-raising moments !) trying out some of the recipes from the first ever Bake Box. I've never made a swiss roll before, let alone a polka dot one, so I was slightly nervous it would all go horribly wrong, but it was actully a great success ! Check out the official recipe as well as a very useful video tutorial over on the Bake Box Blog. Here's my tweaked and slightly simplified version.

Polka Dot Swiss Roll

For the pink cake mix :

Oil or Cake Release Spray

75g butter, at room temperature

75g icing sugar

2 egg whites

75g plain flour

½tsp vanilla essence

Food Colouring Gel (in pink or any colour of your choice)

For the plain cake mix:

3 medium eggs

125g caster sugar

125g self-raising flour

For the filling :

1/3 jar strawberry or raspberry jam

can of squirty cream

For the decorations :

fresh strawberries

200g white chocolate

food colouring dust (optional)

sprinkles/ freeze dried raspberries or strawberries

Here's the recipe card, showing their prettified version that I was aiming to recreate, and the silicon mat from the Bake Box. 

Now proper bakers have a KitchenAid. I have to make do with a mini-helper with a Rabbid Rabbits plastic whisk from a McDonald's Happy Meal !

Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then gradually whisk in the egg whites. Stir in the vanilla and food colouring then fold in the flour.

Put the greased silicon mat in a swiss roll tin - or if you haven't got one, I discovered that a roasting tin will do ! Use the polka dot pattern to pipe dollops of pink cake mix in a regular pattern. (You could do this yourself with a regular silicon mat.) I'd like to try with other patterns like squiggles or hashtags or swirls next time. Put it in the fridge while you mix up the plain batter.

Whisk together the eggs and sugar then gently fold in the flour for the plain cake mix. Pour it over the top of the pink dots and very carefully spread it across the entire surface with a spatula. Bash the tin down flat a few times to get rid of air bubbles.

Bake in a preheated oven at 200°C for 10-12 minutes until pale golden and starting to shrink away from the edges of the tin. Allow to cool slightly on the silicon mat then roll it up (this makes it easier to roll up without breaking later), unroll it and leave it to cool completely (still on the silicon mat).

While it was cooling, we made some chocolate decorations for the top. We melted white chocolate and mixed in some food colour dust - it was supposed to be blue but came out a bit of a dodgy warship grey colour ! We spread it out thickly on a sheet of foil, sprinkled silver balls and freeze dried raspberries over the top then left it to set. While still soft but almost set, we used a mini butterfly cookie cutter to cut out chocolate shapes for the top of the cake then put them in the fridge to set completely.

When completely cooled, spread the whole surface of the cake with jam. I was supposed to make firm whipped cream from scratch but I went for the easy option and used a can of squirty cream instead (not through laziness but because the kids were getting impatient !).

Now for the tricky part. Carefully roll it up while gently peeling off the silicon mat. I was amazed at how well the polka dots worked.

This was already a pretty amazing looking cake if you ask me (and I'd have been tempted to stop there if the kids hadn't been egging me on !).

Squirt more cream across the top and stick on heaps of chopped fresh strawberries and chocolate butterflies - or sprinkles or icing sugar or whatever you fancy really.

The cake itself wasn't the most fantastic tasting cake I've ever made but it definitely had visual wow-factor and the kids couldn't get their heads around the polka dot pattern ! The chocolate butterfly shapes would have looked better in a different colour but overall, we were very pleased with the way it turned out.

Disclosure : I received a Bake Box for review.