Mocha Roll

I'm not all that great a cook. If you want great, you need to go visit Peter. But sometimes, I surprise myself. When flipping through my 1950s era McCalls cookbook a few nights back, I found recipes for jelly rolls, which I've never felt the great impulse to make. And yet, when I found the recipe for a mocha roll, I was intrigued. There was only one minor problem: I have no jelly roll pan. Oh, well, nothing stops me if I want to do something, and last night I had the impulse to do this while Jeffrey and his Dad were trimming our arbor vitae. Look, I could stand outside and fret about those two idiots being on ladders, 2 stories up, waving hedge trimmers in the air, or I could cook. Cooking won. As a bonus, I found something that Paula's little one can eat. Warning: This is very caloric. I believe calories hopped off this and attached themselves firmly to me while I was making it.

MOCHA ROLL

6 egg whites
1/4 cup sugar
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
confectioner's sugar

Pan preparation: grease the jelly roll pan, and then line it with waxed paper. Preheat oven to 375F.

Whip the egg whites with 1/4 cup sugar until stiff. Set aside. Using the same beaters, whip the egg yolks with 1/2 cup sugar until thick and lemon colored. Add the cocoa powder and extracts and beat into the egg yolks until well combined. Fold the egg yolk mixture into the egg whites until just combined, then coax into the jelly roll pan. Bake 12 to 14 minutes, or just until the surface springs back when gently pressed with fingertip.

Run a thin metal spatula around the edges of the pan to loosen the roll. Sprinkle the top with confectioner's sugar. Place a towel on top of the pan, followed by a rack, and invert the whole thing. The cake will fall out of the pan. Remove the pan, and carefully peel off the waxed paper. Gently roll the cake up inside the towel the long way, so it is a 15" long log. Let it cool on the rack for at least 30 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare the filling.

Mocha Cream Filling:

1 cup whipping cream
3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 tbsp. instant coffee
1 tsp. vanilla extract.

Let the coffee and cocoa powder sit in the cream for a few minutes to dissolve. Whip the cream with all ingredients added.

Unroll the cake. Spread with 3/4 of the mocha cream filling, and roll the cake back up, in the same direction as it was rolled to cool. I left the cake on the towel, and used the towel to roll it back up; it made it so much easier! Place on a serving platter, frost with the remaining filling, and put in the fridge for at least an hour. Slice with a sharp serrated knife to serve.

As I mentioned, I don't have a jelly roll pan, so I used an 11x17 baking sheet. So my cake is thinner than it should have been. Also, I multiplied the filling recipe by 1.5, but I've given it to you in its original format, so you can decide what to do with it.