Jelly Roll Time!

Recently I rediscovered my love for baking by committing myself to make a treat to share with my gaming group every week. At first I was just making cakes from box mixes, but then I decided to experiment with making a cake from scratch. It turned out wonderfully and everyone enjoyed it, so I decided to continue making cakes from scratch. One week though, my friend pulled out the cook book for me and just happened to leave it open with a pen pointing at the jelly roll recipe. Having never made a jelly roll before, I was a little worried. "Jelly rolls use a specific pan? where am I going to get one of those? Would a cookie sheet work, or would it be too shallow?" Fortunately, I was able to determine the size of a jelly roll pan and discovered that my baking stone from Pampered Chef would work perfectly. It was a big hit, and ever since then I've been trying out new fillings for my jelly rolls. Recently I decided to try a cherry filling and it turned out wonderfully. Here's some pictures:

And, since some of you are probably wanting to know how to make this, here's the recipe I used from Betty Crocker's Cookbook, Ninth printing, 1983:

Ingredients:
 3 eggs
 1 cup sugar
 1/3 cup water
 1 tsp. vanilla
 3/4 cup all purpose flour or 1 cup cake flour
 1 tsp baking powder
 1/4 tsp salt
 About 2/3 cup jelly or jam
 Powdered sugar

Heat oven to 375℉. Line jelly roll pan, 15.5x10.5x1 inch, with aluminum foil or waxed paper; grase generously. Beat eggs in small mixer bowl on high speed until very thick and lemon colored, about 5 minutes. Pour eggs into large mixer bowl. Beat in granulated sugar gradually. Beat in water and vanilla on low speed. Add flour, baking powder, and salt gradually, beating just until batter is smooth. Pour into pan.

Bake until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, 12 to 15 minutes. Immediately loosen cake from edges of pan; invert on towel sprinkled generously with powdered sugar. Carefully remove foil. Trim off stiff edges if necessary.

While hot, carefully roll cake and towel from narrow end. Cool on wire rack at least 30 minutes. Unroll cake; remove towel. beat jelly slightly with fork to soften; spread over cake. Roll up; sprinkle with powdered sugar.        10 servings.


Here's some tips on making this recipe that I've discovered while making it. First of all, don't use a terry cloth towel to wrap the cake in. It will stick and be very difficult to get off without damaging the cake. If you only own terry cloth towels, either try to use an old one that isn't very fluffy anymore or use a piece of cloth larger than the jelly roll you don't mind getting dirty. Also, I found that if I let the cake cool completely before unrolling it, it tended to crack making it hard to spread the filling on as well as to roll up. When mixing the ingredients for the cake, it's best to mix all the dry ingredients, minus the sugar, together before adding them into the batter.

For the filling, I find that using jelly or jam is a little odd since I prefer a sweeter filling. As an alternative, one can wither make a filling using the recipe below, also from Betty Crocker, or by slightly heating a can of pie filling, such as cherries, and a bit of cornstarch to thicken it up a bit. For the jelly roll pictured above, I cut all of the cherries in half and mixed about two heaping teaspoons of cornstarch in. I ended up with enough filling for two jelly rolls, which was fortunate since that's how many I was making.

Clear Lemon Filling
 3/4 cup sugar
 3 tablespoons cornstarch
 1/4 teaspoon salt
 3/4 cup water
 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
 1 tablespoon margarine or butter
 1/3 cup lemon juice
 4 drops yellow food color (optional)

Mix sugar, cornstarch, and salt in saucepan. Stir in water gradually. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir 5 minutes. Remove from heat; add lemon peel and margarine. Stir in lemon juice and food color; cool. If filling is too soft, refrigerate until set.

I find this recipe makes a bit more filling than is needed for a jelly roll, unless you want filling all over the place, so I put the remainder aside and enjoyed it later with some vanilla ice cream. You can also experiment with different flavors by replacing the lemon peel and juice with other flavorings, such as cherry extract and by dying it the appropriate color if you so choose. Enjoy!

Recipes from Betty Crocker's Cookbook, Ninth printing, 1983. I do not own or claim to own any of them. All pictures are taken by me unless otherwise noted. Check me out on Twitter.