Monthly Recipe: Deco Roll Cakes

My office has a tradition of bringing in a cake to share on your birthday, so this year I decided to try something new for my birthday cake. I’ve been fascinated by deco roll (Japanese decorated roll cakes or Swiss rolls) for ages now, but I thought it would be beyond my ability to make one having seen how complicated the designs look:

Google Images search for ‘deco roll’

(Google images search for ‘deco roll’)

Then I came across this book and I thought maybe I could do it:

Deco Cakes by Junko

So, here are my first attempts at deco roll cakes!

Arabesque Deco Roll Cake with Green Tea & Red Beans

Ingredients for batter

• 4 eggs (divided into 1 white, 3 whites, and 3 yolks – discard 1 yolk)
• 65g sugar
• 50ml water
• 40ml vegetable oil
• dash of vanilla extract
• 80g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp plain flour
• 1tsp corn starch
• 2tsp matcha green tea powder

Ingredients for Syrup

• 2 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
• 20ml hot water

Ingredients for Filling

• 150ml fresh double cream
• 14g sugar
• 70g sweet boiled azuki beans

Method

TIP: It will make your life a lot easier if you measure out all of your ingredients and prepare your pattern before starting to bake!

Pre-heat the oven to 170 C. First make the yolk batter. Put 3 egg yolks in a bowl and whisk. Add half the sugar (35g) and beat with a hand mixer until lighter in colour.

Add water, oil and vanilla and continue beating. Once mixed, sift in the flour (80g). Beat with a hand mixer until sticky.

Next, make the pattern. Put 1 tbsp of the yolk batter into a separate small bowl. Stir in 1/2 tsp of flour.

In another bowl, whisk 1 egg white with a hand mixer. Add a pinch of corn starch and continue whisking until soft peaks form.

Stir 2/3 of the meringue into the small bowl of batter.

Put the mixture into an icing piping bag. Place your pattern on a baking tray or swiss roll tin and cover with baking paper. Lightly grease the baking paper with oil.

Draw the arabesque pattern on to the baking paper with the batter and meringue mix. Make sure they have a bit of height. (TIP: The book comes with patterns you can use – I highly recommend buying a copy!) Bake for one and a half minutes.

Next make the cake batter. Dissolve the green tea powder in 20ml of hot water and add to the remaining batter.

Put 3 egg whites into a separate bowl and beat with a hand mixer. Once soft peaks form, whisk in the remaining sugar (30g). Once glossy, add the remaining corn starch (1 tsp) and whisk until stiff peaks form.

Combine the remaining meringue from earlier with the meringue you have just made, and stir one third at a time into the batter. Stir thoroughly until smooth with no lumps.

Pour the batter over the pre-baked pattern. Whack the baking tray against the work surface to remove any air bubbles. Bake for 14 minutes.

When baked, cover the surface of the cake with baking paper. Flip the baking tray over onto a wire rack. Remove baking tray and gently peel the baking paper from the surface. Be sure to do this straight away! Replace paper lightly and allow to cool.

Whilst the cake is cooling, make the filling. Add sugar to cream and whip until thickened.

Dissolve granulated sugar in hot water to make the syrup.

Flip the cake over onto baking paper so the patter is on the bottom. Slice off the edges. Baste the cake with syrup. Spread the cream onto the cake.

Arrange a line of azuki beans on the cake (I could have used more than this actually!).

Lift up the front edge of the cake and carefully but quickly roll.

Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.

Chocolate & Fruit Polka Dot Deco Roll Cake

Ingredients for batter

• 4 eggs (divided into 1 white, 3 whites, and 3 yolks – discard 1 yolk)
• 65g sugar
• 60ml water
• 40ml vegetable oil
• dash of vanilla extract
• 70g plain flour
• 1 tsp plain flour
• 1tsp corn starch
• red food colouring
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder

Ingredients for Syrup

• 2 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
• 20ml hot water

Ingredients for Filling

• 150ml fresh double cream
• 14g sugar
• some strawberries and a banana

Method

The method for this chocolate cake is almost the same as above. I won’t go into the full details here – buy the book! – but you basically need to split the small bowl of yolk batter into two so you can colour one lot red, and of course you need to add cocoa powder instead of green tea to make the cake chocolate.

Both cakes turned out much better than I expected! They looked pretty good, and tasted nice too! They were both longer and skinnier than I expected, so next time I would like to aim for fatter, fluffier cakes, but overall I was really pleased with myself! The reaction in the office was pretty good too! 😀

Deco Cakes by Junko is available on Amazon.co.uk. It’s a great book – I highly recommend it! The book includes all sorts of different ideas for designs, and of course you can make up your own too!

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I’ll be back in January with a new recipe! If you have any suggestions, or perhaps you would like me to try one of your recipes from a book or website, please leave a comment below or get in touch! All the recipes I try on this blog have some connection to Japan and, because I don’t eat meat, they need to be vegetarian or pescetarian. I’m particularly interested in helping to promote Japanese recipe books, so do let me know if you have one I might like!