Today has mostly been spent keeping the children occupied, made easier by the fact we had a 3rd birthday party to attend this afternoon – 28 small children and a bouncy castle kept the adults on their toes! Once the kids were in bed, wrapping and labelling soap took up most of my evening and once again I’m on the threshold of being late with my latest Blogtober post. Deadline is T minus 80 minutes – eek!
Today I thought I’d share something a bit different. I’ve been baking for much, MUCH longer than I’ve been soaping; I was baking with my mother as a small girl, and I’ve continued to do throughout my adult life. There are undoubtedly similarities between soapmaking and baking, so I thought today I would share one of my recipes and see if I can’t inspire a soapmaker out there to try it.
Sadly, the time to bake just doesn’t seem to materialise these days, and the closest I get to baking is catching up with The Great British Bake Off while wrapping soap. Last week the contestants were asked to make a roulade, which, let’s be honest, is nothing more than a big, fancy Swiss Roll. Homemade Swiss Roll is MILES better than the mass produced ones that you can buy at the supermarket, is really quick to make and has the added bonus of being a fat-free sponge. What’s not to like?
Pre-heat your oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6
Take 3 large eggs. Weigh these three eggs (unbroken, in their shells) before you do anything else. Once you know the weight of the three eggs, you then need the same weight of caster sugar and plain flour.
Whisk together the eggs and the caster sugar with an electric hand whisk. You’ll need to keep whisking for a good 10 minutes. The mixture will thicken up and eventually will leave a trail when the whisk taken out of the mixture. It’s very similar to when soap batter reaches ‘trace’. Sift in half the flour, and fold in gently. You don’t want to lose any of the air that has been whisked into the mixture. Once the flour is completely folded in, do the same with the remaining flour. When the ingredients are all combined, pour into a greased, lined 12″ x 9″ baking tray.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the sponge is just cooked. If you go over, it’ll be difficult to roll.
Place a clean (!) tea towel over a cooling rack and dredge it with caster sugar. Turn the sponge out onto the tea towel, and immediately, while still piping hot, roll it up in the sugar coated cloth. Allow the sponge to cool down a little, for about 10 minutes, then very gently unroll and remove the cloth. The sponge will hold much of the ‘roll’, without cracking. Spread the ‘inside’ of the roll with jam, chocolate ganache, lemon curd or whatever takes your fancy, and roll it back up again. Ta-da! You could now carefully slice off both ends (just like a loaf of soap!) and make it look really pretty, but the most important thing is to enjoy!
This is the last one I made, filled with lemon curd. I’m now inspired to make another very soon and I’ll try to add some ‘making of’ pics to this post.
Right, I’m off to press that publish button. Deadline T -29mins 😀