Roll Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

On Saturday we had some friends over for dinner. Y and the father work at the same company and the family lived in Vietnam for a few years because of the father's job. Although they live across the street from us now, soon they are headed to Brazil, again for the father's job. Y is interested in the idea of living abroad for a few years, so he wanted to talk to them to learn more about it.

This family is one of the coolest I've met. They have three boys - 10, 7 and 8 months - who are all so amazing! I was stressing that we have nothing for the older boys to do or play with, so we busted out the Wii. Turns out, we didn't even turn it on - the older boys played with K the whole night. They were so super sweet with him and treated him like a little brother. They ran with him on their backs, put him in the air like an airplane, let K jump all over them and came to the rescue (in one of the most impressive things I ever seen a 7 year old do) when K was close to getting hurt.

The older boy loves sweets, so I'd asked him ages ago what he'd like me to make for dessert, and he said a roll cake. On Friday, however, I was totally hankering for some chocolate. I married the ideas with a vanilla roll cake filled with chocolate buttercream.

Last Christmas I made a Buche de Noel, and loved the cake, so I used the same recipe. Then I filled it with a standard American chocolate buttercream, using dark chocolate powder to take the edge off of the sweetness a bit.

It was all simple to make. Just mix up the batter, in three parts - dry ingredients, egg yolks/sugar and egg whites/sugar.

Then bake and while still warm quickly roll it up in a kitchen towel.

Once it's cool, it can be filled. As I baked it after K was in bed, so I waited until morning to fill it. Then just roll it back up and done!

The ends of my cake had a few parts that baked a bit much, so I cut those off before serving. I ate them the following day, and they tasted just fine.

While eating the cake, the middle boy said that he didn't care for chocolate (uhhh...seriously?!?), but that he loved this cake. Yahoo!! The older boy took me up on an offer for seconds. I'll take that as a win.

Thank you for spending your Saturday night with us! We will miss you when you move. Hopefully we will make a trip to Brazil to visit.