Rolling on out

And this is what always happens. Made a Swiss roll last night then had to more or less sit on my hands to stop myself baking another. Walked the dog this morning, hit the kitchen and have now made a further Swiss roll, plus a sultana and orange cake (well, once you get in the zone...)

After looking at various recipes I started with the old standby the Dairy Book of Home Cookery. This is one of the things my husband brought to our marriage, and he swears by it. Their basic recipe was absolutely fine and pretty much standard. It led to a fairly eggy-tasting sponge but that's bound to happen with free range eggs in a recipe of this sort.

I broke away from their instructions to roll the still-warm sponge in parchment and a tea towel, leaving it to cool. I also didn't bother to measure the jam. This led to a lovely roll with no cracks but also to the jam making a bid for freedom once it was re-rolled. My husband the critic also tells me that fruit 'with lumps in' is no good for this sort of thing. The oven was a little too warm (I turned it one before starting, a mistake given how long the eggs and sugar have to be beaten for) and the shelf was too near the top (something I am terribly lazy about because our shelves don't fit very well and it can be tricky to move them). The resulting sponge was a fantastic shade of golden brown but it could probably have done with another minute for the bit that ends up on the inside of the roll.

So on the whole, I'm pretty pleased given how long it has been since I made one of these. Of course the fact that last time I was in my early teens and managed it without a moment's concern may suggest that I should just get a life.

This morning I made a chocolate roll - same recipe, oven not turned on until I was ready to add the flour and cocoa to the mixture - and it came out perfectly. Following a request for chocolate buttercream to fill it the end result is not as striking as a roll with a cream filling, but it does taste great. The buttercream is fantastically light, and with the cocoa masking the eggyness (egginess?) of the sponge this is apparently the way Swiss rolls are to be made in this house from now on.

This is always a problem. Once the tasting begins regulations start being laid down. My husband has one of those cake addictions which mean that one slice is never enough, so I know that if I wanted to keep experimenting with the plain sponge and non-lumpy jam the results would get eaten, but where's the fun in that? He'll happily contribute detailed feedback, comparing one cake to the last time the same recipe was used or even five times earlier (begging the question of why he can't tell me which of two outfits looks better when I'm going out) but knowing at the outset that it will always be a second rate cake in his eyes is off putting, given that he'll be the one who has to eat it.

While the Swiss roll was cooling in it's sausage of paper and towel, the orange and sultana cake came together. This was by the rubbing in method, which I love using. It's such a relaxing way to spend five minutes and I love the way you hit a tipping point where the stubborn lumps of butter suddenly disappear without trace, leaving a lovely warm colour to the mix.

The cake is a variation on a family fruit cake from the same book. As always with these things I put in more peel that was called for (I hate it when you can barely taste the citrus) and the result is a cake bursting with plump sultanas and zing. The chances of the Swiss rolls being eaten have just plummeted.

This is my other major frustration. It would be almost physically impossible for my husband to eat the amount of baking I could happily produce, and apparently having kids specifically so you can forcefeed them cake is frowned upon (political correctness gone mad). So no more baking for today, and nothing for it but to get the hoover out.