Whipped chocolate roll cake

This was my first cake since the wedding cake, made as a gift for a friends birthday. We haven’t been able to find cocoa powder or chocolate chips in Poland yet, so anything chocolate I’ve made uses bars.

I made a thin roll cake with this recipe from BBC Food, modified by adding a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil to add some moisture and liquid since I only have all-purpose flour.

That was spread with a whipped chocolate ganache (2:1 cream to ~60% dark chocolate). This is similar to one of the fillings of the wedding cake, but not stabilized. Here’s a good overview of chocolate ganache from Tessa Arias.

I made a chocolate Italian-meringue buttercream for the outer layer, which was a major headache. I managed to get my base frosting to the perfect texture after about 10 minutes of beating, but after adding ~50g of melted chocolate it softened like crazy, started to break, and would not recombine. After 20 more minutes of beating, moving in and out of the fridge, and putting on and off a double boiler I finally threw it in the fridge for half an hour and Aisha was finally able beat it back to the original texture.

Finally, I rolled, frosted, and striped with more melted chocolate. The airiness, and rich, real chocolate was amazing! I almost wished we hadn’t decided to give it away.