Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Daring Baker's Swiss Swirl Ice Cream Cake


This month’s challenge was hosted by Sunita . What an exciting challenge! Ice cream cake in such a hot month! I’ve never made an ice cream cake, and I even had a birthday to bring the cake to.

I made the ice creams with the recommended recipes. After reading recommendations to add alcohol to the ice cream so they wouldn’t freeze completely, making the cake easier to cut and eat when it is put together. I added a splash of vodka to the vanilla ice cream, and a splash of dark rum, as well as espresso powder, to the chocolate ice cream. Once those were made, I let them hang out in the freezer for a couple days until i was ready to bake the Swiss rolls and assemble the cake. I wasn’t impressed with quality of the ice creams individually, but in the cake it worked well.

Making the Swiss roll was easy enough. I don’t have the called for 9x11 inch baking sheets, but I do have 9x13 inch baking pans. I had read on the DB forum that someone had an issue with the Swiss roll breaking because they used a larger pan. Not wanting to have to make the Swiss rolls more than once, I calculated, with help from the Hubby, that the original cake batter recipe needed to be increased by about 15%, so I tweaked the recipe, adding an extra egg and such. I then sprayed the pans with baking spray, fitted with parchment paper, and divided the batter evenly by weight.

When the Swiss rolls comes out of the oven, I dumped them on a regular kitchen towel sprinkled with super fine sugar. I later realized I could have found better towels to use, but what I had ended up working, although I would have used thinner, smaller towels if I thought about it. I rolled the Swiss rolls with the towel and let cool on a rack.



Sometime during this I made the fudge. I was doing all of the work, minus the ice cream, on the day of the party that I intended to bring this cake to, and I also had come down with a cold a couple days before. I didn’t have cocoa powder in the house, and substituted unsweetened extra-fine chocolate shavings for the cocoa, and it worked well.

In the meantime, I made the cream filling. When the rolls were cooled, which didn’t take long, I unwrapped and unrolled it. It was sticking a bit to the towel, so I had to be careful not to tear the roll. I transferred the roll to a cutting board that had more sugar on it. I filled the roll with the cream, overfilled it actually, and rolled it up. Wrapped it in plastic wrap, and stuck it in the fridge after i repeated the process with the other roll.



I was waiting for the fudge to cool, which took what seemed like forever, and decided the cake and myself just weren’t going to make it to the intended party. Stupid cold.


The next day I finished assembly the cake, let it freeze overnight, and served the overdue birthday cake a couple days later, it was delicious!