We Should Cocoa: Tiger Swiss Roll

This month’s We Should Cocoa is held by Chele at the Chocolate Teapot who has challenged us to make a swiss roll or a roulade.  You can see last month’s round up here for the marzipan challenge.

Initially, this was supposed to just be a chocolate orange swiss roll but I think when it had been baked and rolled, it was looking pretty tiger-y! So I thought I would share with you some interesting tiger facts:-

I was born in the Chinese year of the tiger.  Also due to the time of year of my birth the element of fire is also attached to me.  This means I am a Fire Tiger.  Jim is a Water Pig.  I’m happy with this.  Jim? Not so much.  Water Pig.  Giggle. 

I once sulked for a good few hours because we didn’t get to see the tigers at London Zoo.  I was 23.  I’m never going back to London Zoo. 

Tigers are cooool.  But you already knew that…

Ingredients

3 eggs

75gr caster sugar

75gr self raising flour

½ tbsp cocoa powder

Couple of drops of red and yellow food colouring

Zest of one orange

Orange curd

Chocolate butter cream

Method

1, Beat the sugar and eggs together until pale and fluffy

2, Gently fold the sifted flour into the beaten sugar and eggs until just incorporated. 

3, Take four tablespoons of the batter and divide it between two bowls.

4, Gently stir the cocoa powder into one bowl and the food colouring into the rest

5, Transfer the coloured and cocoa-ed batter into separate sandwich bags, snip a tiny bit off each corner and pipe ‘tiger stripes’ onto a lined and greased Swiss roll tin and pop into the freezer.  I actually used a deep cookie tin to do mine and then, when cooked, trimmed it into a rectangle to roll.

6, When the tiger stripes are frozen solid, gently spoon the remaining cake batter over the top and smooth gently with a wet spoon. Sprinkle the orange zest evenly over the raw batter. 

7, Bake for 7-10 minutes until springy to the touch and starting to go golden brown. 

8, Remove from the oven, along with the greaseproof paper it was baked on and cover the top with a sheet of greaseproof paper.  Leave until just cool enough to handle and roll the whole thing up, with the long side facing you. Leave this to cool

9, When the Swiss roll has cooled, gently unroll it, remove the inside piece of greaseproof and smooth on a layer of chocolate butter cream and top that with some orange curd.

10, Re-roll the whole thing carefully and remove the outside layer of greaseproof.

11, Cut and serve.  Pretend you’re a tiger. (optional)

Recipe tweaked from here