Jelly Roll
3 eggs
1 teaspoon baking-powder
¾ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon lemon extract
1½ cups flour
½ pint jelly
Beat the yolks of the eggs until light, then add the sugar. Stir well and add the flour and baking-powder sifted together, alternately with the milk. Add flavoring. Grease a long shallow pan of the size usually used in roasting meats. The batter should be one-fourth inch deep, for if it is thicker the cake will not roll easily. Make six to eight minutes in a moderate oven (350° F.), watching closely, as it bakes quickly. When done, remove from the oven, and when cool enough to handle, turn out on to a cloth. Cut off the side crusts, spread the jelly over the surface, roll up and wrap the cloth about it to keep it in shape. If the cake was spread too thick in the pan and will not roll, cut it into three parts and lay one upon the other with jelly between. This makes a most delicious layer cake. In this case, frost with a boiled frosting, and sprinkle with a layer of coconut. CAKE FILLINGS AND FROSTINGS
A thin sponge baked in a sheet pan and rolled around jelly. The instructions are sound but assume a cook who already knows the trick of rolling a hot cake.
- The egg whitesThe ingredient list calls for three eggs but the method uses only the yolks; the line telling you what to do with the whites appears to have dropped out. The usual treatment in recipes of this kind is to beat them stiff and fold them in at the end, after the flavoring, and the batter is very stiff without them — 1½ cups flour to only five tablespoons of milk.
- Roll it hot, not coolThis is the hinge. "When cool enough to handle" should be read as barely cool enough: turn the cake out and roll it within a minute or two of leaving the oven. A sponge that cools flat cracks across the back when you bend it.
- Prepare the clothDust the towel generously with powdered or granulated sugar before turning the cake onto it, or the sponge welds itself to the cloth. Roll the cake up in the towel first, let it cool in that shape, then unroll, spread the jelly and re-roll.
- The pan"A long shallow pan of the size usually used in roasting meats" is a rimmed sheet or jelly-roll pan, roughly 10 by 15 inches. Grease it and line the bottom with parchment; quarter-inch depth is accurate for this quantity of batter.
- Oven and timing350°F is stated, which is correct for a moderate oven, though many modern sponges of this thickness go in at 375°F. At either temperature six to eight minutes is right — the cake is done when it springs back and the edges just begin to pull from the pan.
- Lemon extractA full tablespoon is heavy by current standards. One to two teaspoons gives the intended flavor without a medicinal edge.
- Half a pint of jellyThat is one cup, which is ample. Beat it smooth with a fork or warm it briefly so it spreads in a thin even layer; a thick or lumpy filling squeezes out and unrolls the cake.
- YieldOne roll, cutting into eight to ten slices. It is best the day it is made and stales quickly once cut.
The jelly roll is the American name for a form that appears across Europe in the nineteenth century — the Swiss roll in Britain, the roulade in France, Biskuitrolle in German-speaking countries — all of them built on the same thin, quick-baking sponge that can be bent while warm. The recipe is a lean one: three eggs, sugar, flour and five tablespoons of milk. Butterick, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, published household compendiums of this sort for the same readership, and the tone shows it — practical, forgiving, and quick to offer a fallback. The note that a too-thick cake can simply be cut into three and stacked with jelly between is one such fallback.