Can't decide between ice-cream and cake for dessert? No worries, make an Arctic Roll and you can have both!
'Arctic Roll?' I hear you ask. I'd never heard of it either until I it appeared as the teaser picture for the upcoming edition of taste.com.au. It looked great, but as it is in next month's edition, there was no recipe. So I turned to Google and discovered an arctic roll it is a 'retro English' dessert, traditionally made from plain sponge, layered with jam and rolled around an ice-cream centre.
My version uses a chocolate sponge wrapped around vanilla ice-cream with a Picnic bar centre. Same, same but different!
I had intended to use chocolate ice-cream but we already had vanilla in the freezer. A home-made, no-churn ice-cream, like the one I used in my Cherry Ripe Chocolate Tarts, would also work well.
You could use any chocolate bar in the middle, however you really need a textural element to complement the light sponge and soft ice-cream. Whoa, I just re-read that last sentence and realise I sounded like a MasterChef wanna-be. How about 'it really needs some crunch' instead? So try to make sure your selected chocolate bar has a bit of crunch or bite to it.
Also try to mirror the flavours of your selected chocolate bar in your toppings. For example if you use a bar with a caramel filling, you could also drizzle the roll with some caramel sauce.
I don't have a Swiss Roll tray, but a standard shallow oven baking tray worked well for me. I used the sponge recipe from this recipe at Red Online. I like their idea of using Nutella in place of the traditional jam, maybe next time?
It's a great dessert to make when people come over as it can be made completely ahead of time.
Chocolate Arctic Roll
adapted from this Chocolate Arctic Roll
Ingredients:
- 40g plain flour
- 30g cocoa
- 6 eggs (3 whole, 3 separated)
- 110g caster sugar
- 45g brown sugar
- 1L vanilla ice-cream
- Picnic chocolate bars (2 large or 5 small)
- Chocolate sauce and crushed peanuts to serve
- Remove ice-cream from freezer to allow to soften
- To make Swiss Roll: Pre-heat oven to 210 degrees Celsius. Line a 22cm x 33cm Swiss Roll pan with baking paper.
- Sift the flour and cocoa into a bowl.
- Take the three eggs and three yolks and place in a mixing bowl with the caster sugar and whisk until pale and doubled in size.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the 3 egg whites and brown sugar until soft peaks form and carefully fold this into the egg yolk mixture.
- Gently fold into the flour and cocoa.
- Pour the batter into the lined tray and bake for 10-15 minutes.
- Allow to cool for 10 minutes and turn out onto clean tea towel and remove baking paper.
- Spread softened ice-cream over roll. Marble some chocolate sauce through the ice-cream.
- Place picnic bars along the middle of the roll.
- Use tea towel to help roll the sponge firmly and tightly.
- Once rolled, place on a tray and cover in cling wrap.
- Place roll in the freezer and remove 10 minutes before you are ready to serve.
- Top with chocolate sauce and peanuts to serve.
Have you heard of an Arctic Roll before?
Keep smiling
Dani
This looks freaking amazing! And it even looks like something I can manage ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks Cathleen. Gotta love a recipe that looks like it took more effort than it really did!
Deletewow. just wow. I"ve never heard of this but I love it! Yum, yum yum. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds fabulous. Yummo!
ReplyDeleteWOW! I love this dessert - and those sneaky picnics in the middle. Just gorgeous!!!
ReplyDeleteOo I've never heard of an artic roll before either, but by the looks of yours is looks delicious!! I love the yummy centre
ReplyDelete