What is a Swiss Swirl Ice Cream Cake? It is chocolate cake that has whipped cream rolled up inside it (this is where the swirl part comes from) layered on top (though built upside-down!) of ice cream! The challenge included making the cake, whipped cream, ice cream and fudge sauce all from scratch!
The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.
First of all, many of the recipes in this challenge call for caster sugar, which, according to the DB website, “Caster sugar is finely ground granulated sugar. It can also be found as “superfine sugar”, “fruit sugar” or “quick dissolving sugar”. If you can’t find it, you can make your own by whizzing some regular granulated sugar in the food processor or blender.”
I, of course, could not find anywhere that sold caster sugar, so I made my own from granulated sugar. I would like to see exactly what caster sugar looks like compared to regular sugar.
Anyway, the cake was pretty easy to make, though I had some trouble removing the parchment paper from the back of it, so I had to do some patchwork, but it all worked out in the end.
The sugar that is used for the whipped cream and the vanilla ice cream (which is really just frozen whipped cream) is vanilla sugar, which (as said in the instructions) is ground sugar and vanilla pod pieces. You can make vanilla sugar anytime by adding scraped vanilla pods (leftover from other recipes) in with granulated sugar. Then you can use that instead of granulated sugar and vanilla extract in any recipe such as cookies or cake.
I made a half recipe of everything, since I know that I’ll probably be the one eating it all! So, I used half the whipped cream for the filling in the cake and froze the rest for the vanilla ice cream part. It worked out perfectly.
The chocolate ice cream was simple but took much longer to freeze than the vanilla. I think if I make it again, I’ll try whipping it up a bit and then putting it in the freezer since the vanilla was whipped first and then frozen and still worked. It was interesting to make an egg-less ice cream and one that can just be put in the freezer and just stirred every so often rather than using an ice cream machine or some other way of spinning the base. It is a good thing to know in case I ever find myself in need of egg-less ice cream again!
The chocolate fudge sauce that goes in between the ice cream layers (this is not a dessert for someone on a diet!) was also easy to make. Just put all ingredients in the pot and whisk/cook until thick and bubbly.
Altogether, this was a pretty simple challenge, but you really have to be patient and allow for cooling, chilling, and freezing time of all of the components/layers. Since I tasted all of the components individually as I went along, I am sure that it will all be worth it when it is all frozen together! (after 24 hours…) I just tried all of the components frozen together, and they are good. I ended up with more vanilla ice cream than chocolate, but since the cake is chocolate, it ended up being a good balance. Continue reading →
Cake Sharing 