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Chocolate Roll
Mrs. A. L. Johnson. 5 eggs, separated 2 T cocoa ½ C sugar Salt Beat 5 egg yolks well and add sugar, salt and cocoa. Beat whites stiff and fold into other mixture. Spread on greased paper and bake in shallow pan for 20 or 30 minutes. Roll as for jelly roll. 1 C sugar Filling 2 T cocoa 1C cold water 3 rounded t cornstarch Cook until it thickens. When cool unroll cake and spread on filling, and roll again. When cool, slice and cover with whipped cream. Mrs. E. McDonald, Waukegan, Ill. 1/3 C butter 1 C sugar 2 eggs 1¾ C pastry flour
A flourless chocolate sponge rolled around a cocoa cornstarch filling. The recipe gives no oven temperature and no pan size, and its baking time is the one number worth ignoring.
- Oven temperatureNone is stated, as is common in community cookbooks. Bake at 350F.
- Baking timeTwenty to thirty minutes will dry out a thin eggs-and-cocoa sheet, and a dry sheet cracks apart when rolled. Check at 12 minutes and pull it when the top springs back and the surface is just set, usually 12 to 15 minutes.
- The pan and the paper"Shallow pan" most likely means something like a jelly roll pan, roughly 10 by 15 inches. Line it with parchment and grease that; the original specifies only greased paper.
- Roll it warmTurn the cake out onto a sugar-dusted towel as soon as it comes from the oven, roll it up warm with the towel inside, and let it cool rolled; the original's own sequence (roll, then "when cool unroll") implies the same. A cold flourless sponge is much more likely to crack when rolled for the first time.
- SaltUnmeasured, as often in these books. A scant quarter teaspoon in the yolks is right for five eggs.
- The fillingOne cup sugar, two tablespoons cocoa, three rounded teaspoons cornstarch and one cup cold water make a cocoa pudding. Whisk the dry ingredients together before adding the water or the cornstarch will lump, then cook over medium heat, stirring, until it thickens and boils for a minute so the starch loses its raw taste. It will be quite sweet and thick; cool it fully before spreading.
- The stray ingredients at the endThe line reading 1/3 C butter, 1 C sugar, 2 eggs, 1¾ C pastry flour belongs to the following recipe in the book, not to the chocolate roll. The printed page was checked and the flour quantity is 1¾ cups as given here. Ignore the line when making this recipe.
- YieldOne roll, about 8 to 10 slices. Slice with a serrated knife and add the whipped cream at the table, not in advance.
This is a community cookbook entry with two names on the page: the cake from Mrs. A. L. Johnson, and Mrs. E. McDonald of Waukegan, Illinois, whose name most likely heads the following recipe, whose ingredient list the printer has run onto the end. Rolled sponge cakes were familiar American home baking under the name jelly roll by the later nineteenth century, and "roll as for jelly roll" is all the instruction the contributor thought necessary; the technique was assumed knowledge in a way it no longer is. Flourless versions leaning on separated eggs for structure appear in community and denominational cookbooks in the first half of the twentieth century, when packaged cocoa was cheap and reliable. A chocolate dessert built from cocoa powder and cornstarch rather than melted block chocolate was the economical choice for a congregation's dessert table.