Swiss Swirl Ice Cream Cake

Yay! My second challenge as a Daring Baker. It involved ice cream and a dessert that is apparently called Swiss Roll. In Switzerland it is known as "Roulade", but then in Germany a "Roulade" is a meat dish. So I'll better stick with Swiss Roll for this post.

The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

I completed the challenge three weeks ago for a barbecue with friends. But when it came to taking pictures my friends' camera wouldn't budge. Luckily I still had a smaller version of the ice cream cake in my fridge at home. So that's the one you can see on the pictures.

For the Swiss roll, including the vanilla cream filling and the fudge sauce I stuck to Sunita's recipes. For the ice creams I made white chocolate-stracciatella and grapefruit with chocolate chips. Especially the grapefruit ice cream was great! Will definitely have to do it again. Although the combination of the flavours was tasty, I would use different ice creams the next time with better matching colours... Luckily at the barbecue it was already dark when I served it :-)

I had some trouble with the Swiss roll. I hadn't done one in a while (like not for more than 20 years) and my pan was a little bigger than in the recipe, so probably they were too thin. Also, they stuck to the towel and were more in patches than anything else... So, when they were rolled, I put them in the freezer immediately to stabilise them for the cutting. This actually worked well, but the slices were not nice and round but more of an oblong shape. Well, I kind of liked them this way, anyway :-)

For the grapefruit ice cream I used Ms. Humble's recipe for pomegranate gelato. I substituted pomegranate juice with grapefruit juice and pomegranate liqueur with grapefruit liqueur. I also added a pinch of mustard powder, because I read it here that it intensifies the flavor. Thanks for the tip Audax. A word on the grapefruit liqueur: I never thought it would be so difficult to buy some. I would even have settled for grapefruit sirup or any kind of grapefruit flavoured alcohol (e.g. vodka). But in none of my trusted delicacy stores I could find any of those. And I didn't have the time to make my own grapefruit liqueur, because you have to infuse it for several weeks. I ended up taking the train to another town during my lunch break because I found out about a store that sold grapefruit liqueur there. Simply changing to a different flavour for the ice cream was just not an option. Talking about obsessing slightly about recipes...

For the White Chocolate-Stracciatella ice cream I used this recipe. Also with the addition of a pinch of mustard powder. I was also quite nice, but a little sweet for my taste.

I loved making the ice cream - I have never done this before and don't own an ice cream maker. It was still fairly easy to make them without it, the only problem was, that it took much longer for the ice cream to freeze than indicated in the recipes. Since I made them in the evening it meant that I got to sleep much later than planned. Well, we all have to make sacrifices for our baking projects.

Scones

I love scones. Whenever I spend some time in the UK or Ireland I eat as many as possible. Well, obviously not as many as possible - that would cause serious problems with my wardrobe... Notwithstanding my love for fresh, warm scones with clotted cream and jelly, it took me until the beginning of this year to find out that I could make them at home. For some strange reason I just thought it was a really tricky recipe. So I was very surprised, when I learned about how easy it actually is and that it only requires ingredients, that I have in my cupboard most of the time. So now the only problem is finding the clotted cream in Zurich...

 

This here is a basic scone recipe. I like them plain, but you could easily add raisins or chocolate chips or dried fruit. A word about the sugar: I like to use brown sugar, but of course you could also use white sugar. Also, an interesting thing happens when you lower the sugar amount to 30g: the taste of the scones will be on the verge of sweet to savory, so I imagine they would go great with e.g. gravad lax.

225g flour
1 tsp. baking powder
0.5 tsp. salt
40g sugar
40g butter, cold and in pieces
1 egg
100ml milk

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Prepare a baking tray with baking paper.

In a bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.

Add the butter pieces and grind it together with the butter (ideally using cold hands) until you end up with an even, crumbly, dry mass.

In a separate bowl mix together the egg and the milk and then add it to the flour-butter-mix. Quickly blend all the ingredients, trying to knead the dough as little as possible. It doesn't matter if it still looks uneven, as long as the wet and dry ingredients are combined.

Sprinkle a little flour on the working surface and lightly flatten the dough to about 2cm. Cut the scones using a round cookie cutter of about 4cm diameter.

Bake the scones in the middle of the oven for about 12-14min until golden brown.

Eat directly from the tray, with a little clotted cream and jelly. Or, if you're more disciplined than me, let them cool down until lukewarm and serve on a nice plate. Of course, you can also let them cool down completely, but scones are best eaten when really fresh, so don't wait with eating them for longer than a day or two.

Since clotted cream is quite hard to find here in Zurich (or ridiculously expensive) I usually use double cream (fat content of about 50-60%) and beat it until fluffy.

The jelly in the picture is crab apple jelly (not homemade). I believe traditionally it should be strawberry jelly, but I didn't have that in my cupboard at that moment. And at least I bought the crab apple jelly in Edinburgh, adding a real Scottish component to my Sunday breakfast.