If I were a journalist

When I was 9 years old I took cookery lessons, one of the things we had to make was Chocolate Swiss Roll and herein started a sporadic trend. I can’t remember how many swiss rolls I’ve made since the age of 9, but it’s a few. Success varied a little but generally my efforts were edible, and surprisingly they rolled well with few cracks. I remember even my very first attempt in class being on par with your average adults cake. 

This Christmas I decided to have another bash at the faithful Swiss Roll. The family had started off with a notion that we should have an epic dessert trolley for the festivities, two of those items were to be a Swiss Roll and a Black Forest Gâteau. In a momentary brainwave, I decided to combine these two favourite puddings and make a Black Forest Gâteau Yule Log. And this was before Kirstie Allsopp’s Christmas show aired, which then featured the exact same idea! 

Now, where to start. I had no solid recipe for either pudding, let alone a bastardisation of both. But had a theory in my head of how I could blend the two together successfully, provided I had the grounding of an excellent rollable sponge. 

I googled, thumbed the pages of various cookery books in the kitchen and eventually settled for a Mrs Beetons classic Swiss Roll recipe, which I bastardised. I mainly wanted the quantities for ingredients and a sense of whether to go for a butterless recipe or not. 

Finally I settled on these ingredients: 

• 3oz of plain flour
• 1 level teaspoon of baking powder
• 3 fresh eggs
• 3oz of castor sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa

Mrs Beetons original recipe called for jam (as a filling) which we obviously wouldn’t need and vanilla essence, which I ditched in favour of the cocoa. 

I then totally reinvented the method, ignoring anything Mrs Beeton had to say on the matter: 

1. Line a 30cm x 20cm x 2cm size tin with parchment paper, leaving a little extra parchment at the edges, and turn the oven to 220 celsius to preheat
2. Take the eggs and separate the yolks from whites into two separate bowls
3. Whisk the whites until stiff
4. Add the sugar and whisk again thoroughly 
5. Add the yolks and sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa into the bowl
6. Fold the mixture together gently until it’s a smooth consistency
7. Pour the mixture into the lined tin
8. Try and make the mixture as even and smooth as possible in the tin
9. Bake for 7 minutes

Whilst your sponge is in the oven you need to prepare your filling. For this you’ll need only two ingredients:

• Jar of kirsch soaked cherries 
• Roughly 220g of clotted cream (my personal favourite is Rodda’s)

Once you’ve materialised those:

1. Drain the cherries, keeping the kirsch juice to one side
2. Roughly chop the cherries into small-ish pieces
3. Mix together cherries and cream in a bowl 

Once the sponge has served its 7 minutes in the oven, remove and..

1. Lift it out of the tin using the edges of excess parchment and place on a cooling rack, leave to cool for a few minutes but no longer - rolling is easier when warm
2. Brush the sponge with the kirsch you saved from earlier, brushing the entire sponge twice should do it - you don’t want to soak it too much
3. Personally, at this stage I like to loosen my sponge from the parchment as I find it easier to roll the sponge if it’s done beforehand, but personal preference should be exercised
4. Generously cover the sponge with the cherry and cream mixture. Keeping in mind that as you roll, the mixture will push to the edges and the very end flap needs a little less than the middle (or it’ll just be pushed out) 
5. Now for the exciting part. Roll the sponge as tight you can, using two even spaced hands. I find the initial curl is the trickiest, as it’s the part most likely to break off if your sponge isn’t springy enough
6. Hopefully you’re now left with a lovely log shape that will sit nicely, not crumbling apart or unfurling! The true test is whether you have any cracks in the rolled sponge, if you don’t; it’s a success
7. Leave the log to cool properly, then you can ice the little beauty

A low quality pic of my little beauty in the fridge, cooling

Now, icing. My all time personal preference is Cadburys chocolate. But you could use chocolate frosting or any number of different types of chocolate. That’s just my favourite. I like chocolate best because I love cracking the outside when I cut into it. 

To make your bark, all you have to do is melt a 230g bar and slather the chocolatey goodness all over the log. Pay special attention to the ends that will need the chocolate to be used generously, to cover the exposed cake. As the chocolate cools, attack the log with a fork, dragging it across the surface to make bark like swirls.

Before the chocolate sets entirely, I like to add some decoration. This year I found an adorable little robin in my sisters cake decoration collection to use, but a festive slogan and holly is my absolute staple. Unless you’re not making this for Christmas, of course, as I’d be very pleased if someone made me a cake like this for my birthday. 

Put the log in the fridge so the chocolate can set and so that cream doesn’t go off.

All that is left to do is add a dusting of icing sugar once it’s set, for that final festive cheer! 

and the inside should look something like this..