WATERCOLOR CAKE ROLL Recipes

If you saw me in the kitchen, you’d never guess that I enjoy baking. I’m irritable and stressed out, and that’s when things are going well. If things aren’t, well, it’s best you stay as far away from the kitchen as possible. Ryan can tell you this from experience, for sure. Such was the case with this cake roll.

I’d been psyching myself up to make a cake roll since early January. I don’t know why I was so anxious about it exactly… I had made them in school before, and it wasn’t really a big deal. It is a bit of a process though, or at least I made it out to be one in my head, specifically because I wanted to do a pattern on it. That was my biggest hurdle — deciding how I wanted to do the pattern. I have this perfectionist complex coupled with the laziness of only wanting to do things ONCE, so I procrastinated for weeks.

So, the Valentine’s Cake Roll turned into a Spring Cake Roll. I finally mustered up the courage and kinda winged it. A patterned cake roll is actually really easy to do. You basically just pipe/spread a design onto a silicone mat or parchment, chill that, then spread the cake batter on top and bake.

I had some ideas of how I wanted to do the pattern, but none of them worked. I had only made a small amount of paste (just enough for what was needed), so it would have been hard to fill a piping bag and use a tip. I decided to try filling a plastic sandwich bag and clipping off the end. Has anyone actually used this technique with success? It was pretty much the worst thing ever. I tried to pipe nice round dots with it, only to end up with wonky, lopsided ovals. That was Epic Fail #1.

Finally, I scraped everything off and said &*%$ it. I elaborated on Fail #2 and covered the whole thing with alternating schmears of color. Going for kind of a “watercolor” look and hoping it wouldn’t look like total crap. I couldn’t really tell what it looked like after I had spread it on, since it would be the underside that was visible once the cake was done. Whatever, I was over it, into the fridge it went while I made the cake batter.

INGREDIENTS
Color Paste:

• 1/4 cup cake flour 33g
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter 25g, room temperature
• 3 Tbsp powdered sugar 25g
• 1 large egg white reserve yolk for cake
• color gel

Cake:

• 1/4 cup cake flour 33g, sifted
• 3 Tbsp cornstarch
• 4 large eggs
• 1 large egg yolk from paste recipe
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 Tbsp granulated sugar
• 3/4 tsp vanilla optional
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar optional

Whipped Cream:

• 1 cup heavy whipping cream 250ml, cold
• 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• US Customary – Metric

INSTRUCTIONS
Color Paste:

1. Line a 12″ x 17″ sheet pan with a silicone mat or parchment paper.*
2. Sift powdered sugar into a small bowl. Sift flour into another.
3. ……………………………………..

for full instruction please see : livforcake.com