Chocolate Roulade Flourless Sponge Cakes With Chocolate Ganache GLUTEN FREE

This is a flourless and fatless sponge, sometimes referred to in French as biscuit roulade, I first made years ago on a school exchange visit to the Loire. I remember the teacher provided us with lashings of cream, rich dark chocolate and Grand Marnier, which from our English educational establishment perspective, tutored in bread and butter pudding and rock buns seemed incredibly exotic and wonderfully liberating. There has always been tremendous albeit playful tension over this cake/dessert, which in the UK and US has respectively transmogrified into plain teatime Swiss and Jelly roll. Both, with their pale sponge and meagre filling of jam, are but wraithlike shadows of their luscious Gallic counterpart. In fact, at one time legend has it that the Swiss wanted the British to rename their version, as they didn't wish their country to be associated with it!

FOR THE ROULADE SPONGE

(makes around twenty triple stack)

6 eggs separated

150g (5¼oz) blond raw cane sugar
Vanilla bean/pod (I have a vanilla pod in my cooking sugar, so it is already infused and is a great way of getting a permanent supply of delicious organic vanilla sugar!)
50g (2oz) cocoa

TEMPERATURES & NOTIONS

Preheat the oven to 180ºC or 350ºF
A Swiss/jelly roll pan lined with unbleached baking paper

METHOD

Whisk egg yolks and sugar until creamy, sieve and fold in cocoa.

Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks and fold into the egg and sugar mixture.

Pour into prepared pan/tray and spread gently into the corners (in France they often use a flat baking tray and the paper is twisted at each corner to hold in the batter).

Cook for 20 minutes or until the cake is firm to the touch but still springy. If you over cook it, it may crack when you come to cut it (but you can always hide that with ganache)!

Turn out upside down onto cooking paper powdered with sugar.

When cool cut into small rounds - I used the top of a spice jar.

FOR THE GANACHE

Use equal amounts of chocolate and cream (I use raw). This will make a ganache that holds its shape. I would use 100g (4oz) of quality cooking chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa. 

Heat the cream gently on a low heat, do not boil or simmer, it just needs to be hot enough to melt the chocolate.

Whilst the cream is warming, grate the chocolate.

Remove the cream from the heat and add the chocolate.

Leave to stand for a few minutes.

 

Beat mixture with a wooden spoon until it is smooth.

Leave to cool.

If needed (mine actually was thick enough already) whisk the ganache for a couple of minutes to obtain a thicker, fluffier frosting.

ASSEMBLY

Stack the cakes in layers, alternating fillings. My choice is a home-made fruit compote made with fresh apricots cooked with a little sugar and ganache with a physalis atop. I placed them in paper cake cases for ease of serving and eating!

Enjoy!

All that needs to be said now is Bon Appėtit!

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from my 100 Gluten-Free Organic Party Foods Challenge!

All the best,

Sue

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