So the Great British Bake Off is back for another year and last night saw the bakers challenged with cakes. Swiss rolls, cherry cake and miniature British classics. In celebration of the bake off the Great Blogger’s Bake Off is also starting up again and my first recipe for it is this chocolate and vanilla version of a swiss roll adapted from a Mary Berry recipe in the book she signed for me last year. It’s partly inspired by those cadbury mini-rolls that have been around forever. I remember them from years ago and always liked them although I couldn’t tell you when I last had one. This is my attempt to make a giant one.

The sponge is striped chocolate and vanilla, and the filling is striped milk and white chocolate ganache. Finally the whole cake is covered in dark chocolate and white chocolate stars.

Ingredients

For the cake:

100g Castor sugar

4 Large eggs (beaten)

1 tsp Vanilla essence

100g Self raising flour

25g Cocoa powder

For the filling:

100g White chocolate

100g Milk Chocolate

50ml Double cream

200g Dark chocolate

White chocolate stars or similar to decorate

Method

• Preheat your oven to 220c
• In a free standing mixer whisk the sugar, eggs and vanilla essence using a balloon whisk attachment. Whisk until the mixture is stiff enough to leave soft peaks when the whisk lifts out.
• Sift in the flour a little at a time, folding gently by hand to keep the air in the mixture.
• Split the mixture in half and sift the cocoa powder into one half, folding as with the flour.
• You should now have a vanilla mix and a chocolate mix.
• Grease and line a baking tray with a raised edge with greaseproof paper, then grease the paper itself to stop it from sticking.
• Place your two mixtures into jugs and pour stripes of the mixture into the tray.
• Use a skewer to drag across the stripes and produce an attractive pattern as below.
  
• Bake in the preheated oven for 8 minutes. The sponge should be firm but only lightly coloured.
• Once the cake is cooked score a line about 1cm from the end and roll up the sponge while it is hot. This will help it to roll later once it is cooled and filled.
• While the cake is cooling melt the white and milk chocolate in separate bowls.
• Add 25ml of double cream to the white and stir until the mixture thickens. Repeat this for the milk chocolate.
• Pipe alternating lines of white and milk chocolate ganache onto the cooled cake then re-roll it and wrap firmly in several layers of cling film to help it settle into shape. The ganche will set and help hold the shape once the clingfilm is removed. Leave for at least an hour.
• After at least an hour melt the dark chocolate and cut the clingfilm off the cake.
• Pour the melted chocolate over the the cake and use a silicone pastry brush to help coat the cake with the chocolate.
• Sprinkle the cake with the chocolate stars and leave to set – if the weather is particularly warm you may need to place the cake in the fridge. Only do this if really necessary as setting chocolate in a fridge can cause it to “bloom” and show whitish marks.
  

• Thanks to Jenny Paulin for hosting the great bloggers bake off!