An Easter egg patterned sponge is something I've been thinking about for a while. I'm personally a bit bored of the usual Easter egg cupcakes, brownies, traybake, ... (insert cake type here). Everywhere you look it's the 'here's another recipe with mini eggs'... and now the latest trend of cheesecake in a hollow egg... yawn
I love this recipe because it's a fun bake for kids and adults alike. It takes a bit of time because you need to make several coloured pastes but it really is fun and well worth it. I hope you give it a try!
For this recipe you will need a Swiss roll tin (I use a Nordicware version which is 25cm by 35cm).
You will also need 5 piping bags and various small nozzles.
Pre-heat your oven to 180ºC Fan.
Ingredients:
For the patterned paste:
20g Caster Sugar
20g Unsalted Butter (softened)
30g Plain Flour
1 Egg White
Food Colouring of your choice [I chose five shades and used gel colouring]
For the Swiss roll:
4 Large Eggs (separated whites and yolks)
75g Icing Sugar
75g Self-Raising Flour
2 Tbsp Cocoa
2 Tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
Filling and decoration idea:
200g Double Cream
1 Punnet Raspberries
Raspberry Jam
How I make my Easter egg patterned chocolate Swiss roll:
First, measure out your baking paper for the Swiss roll tin but don't add it to the tin just yet. I then pre-drew my Easter egg designs on normal paper.
Next make the pattern paste by mixing together all of the ingredients of the paste, except for the gel colouring. Divide the paste into however many bowls you need for however many colours you want to use and then, by eye, add in your gel colouring to each bowl. I made pastel shades which fits with the Easter theme and made yellow, orange, blue, green and pink. This paste recipe easily doubles as needed.
Once you've made your coloured pastes, transfer them to individual piping bags with small nozzles. I used 5 different sized round nozzles.
With my design work underneath my baking paper, I then traced my designs onto my baking paper with the paste. There is no rule here for design - just freestyle and have fun!
Once you have finished, very carefully transfer the baking paper into your greased tin and. press it into the. tin. You can then fix up any smudges.
While the oven is pre-heating to 180ºC Fan, make your Swiss roll batter. Start by whipping the egg whites to a stiff peak with a pinch of sea salt. Then sift in the icing sugar. Once incorporated, add in the egg yolks one at a time until the mixture is beautiful and pale.
Sift over the flour and cocoa powder, and add in the vanilla and mix carefully with a metal spoon - being careful not to knock too much air out of the mixture.
At this point, put the Swiss roll tin with your pattern paste only in the pre-heated oven for 1 minute.
Take the tin out of the oven and pour over the chocolate batter and spread it evenly in the tin, very carefully. Bake for 8-10 minutes.
While the sponge is still warm, remove it from the tin by turning it over (top face down) onto another clean piece of baking paper, peal off the used baking paper to reveal and check the pattern. You now need to roll it back up in order to cool in it's final shape without the filling. To do. this, turn the sponge patterned side down and then, using the clean baking paper to help you, roll up the sponges with. the paper in-between. Leave it rolled (and unfilled) until it has fully cooled. This helps the sponge to take it's shape and prevents breakage.
To fill and decorate, unroll the sponge and spread liberally with jam, cream and raspberries. Foll back up and as you want to see the glory of the pattern, decorate around the edges.
Goes well with a cup of tea!
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