I had a mouth watering good time coming up with a theme for my Swiss Swirl Ice Cream Cake. Should I do a pumpkin spice Swiss rolls, vanilla ice cream, douche sauce, and coffee ice cream? Or, strawberry short cake Swiss rolls, vanilla ice cream, chocolate fudge sauce, and strawberry ice cream? I decided that a Tiramisu inspired cake would taste wonderful and sophisticated.
I created Tiramisu Swiss rolls by using the Butter Sponge Cake recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I doubled the cake recipe and divided the batter between two buttered and floured 9”x13” rectangular cake pans. I baked the cakes for 20 min at 350, rotating the cakes half way through from top to bottom rack. Once the cakes where out of the oven I continued with the directions posted for the challenge on making the rolls and let them cool over night.
I used the following recipe for the mascarpone filling in my rolls:
6 egg yolks1 1/4 cups white sugar1 1/4 cups mascarpone cheese
1 tsp. vanilla
1 3/4 cups heavy whipping cream
Combine egg yolks and sugar in the top of a double boiler. I do this over boiling water. Reduce heat to low.Cook for about 10 minutes and don't go anywhere! Stir it constantly. Remove the mixture from heat and whip in the yolks until its thick. Add the mascarpone and vanilla to the whipped yolks. Beat until combined. Pull your chilled bowl out of fridge and whip the cream until the stiff peaks are formed. Gently fold into yolk mixture and place back in fridge.
With my mascarpone filling made, I carefully unrolled my cake, laying it on cling wrap and brushed 1/3 cup of Kahlua on to the cake. I spread a 1/4 of my mascarpone filling on the cake and dusted the top with cocoa powder. Loosely rolling my concoction with the aid of the cling wrap I placed the log in the freezer to firm up for cutting later. I repeated the process with the second cake.
After I had made my rolls I was left with a lot of mascarpone filling. I also had a Sara Lee Pound Cake in the freezer which I sliced into ladyfinger sized morsels. I dipped them in Kahlua and lined the bottom of a cling wrap lined, glass loaf pan with the “ladyfinger”. I spooned half of the mascarpone filling on top and repeated the steps making a second layer, finishing with a dusting of cocoa powder on top of my mini Tiramisu. I snugged up the cling wrap around the dish and let it sit in the refrigerator for about 6 hours before enjoying.
I settled on a vanilla ice cream layer and an intense coffee ice cream layer for my cake. I doubled the vanilla ice cream recipe and used a vanilla bean plus vanilla extract for the flavoring. I heated the cream and sugar and vanilla bean to very hot, but not boiling on the stove top. I removed the cream mixture from the heat, fished out the vanilla bean, split it, removed the seeds and returned them to the cream mixture, plus 2 tsp. vanilla extract. I transferred half the cream mixture to a mixing bowl to add coffee flavoring to. The remaining vanilla cream mixture was placed in the refrigerator to cool. For the coffee ice cream I added 6 Tbs. of Medagla D’Oro Instant Espresso Coffee, 1 tsp. of Almond Extract and a pinch of salt to the reserved vanilla cream mixture and placed this in the refrigerator overnight to cool.
Once the vanilla cream mixture was completely cooled, I placed it in my ice cream maker and started working on the fudge sauce. I followed the recipe for the challenge and it worked very well, however the sauce was far too sweet for my taste so, I added 2 additional Tbs. of unsweetened cocoa powder to try and adjust for the sweetness. I moved the fudge sauce to the fridge to cool.
I removed one of my Tiramisu Swiss roll logs from the freezer and sliced it into 1/2 inch rounds. I lined a clear glass salad bowl with cling wrap and arraigned the slices in the bowl. I had enough slices from the single log that I didn’t need to use the second Tiramisu log. I placed the Tiramisu roll lined - glass bowl in the freezer covered with cling wrap until the vanilla ice cream was finished. Once the vanilla ice cream was done, I removed the bowl from the freezer and spread a generous layer of the vanilla ice cream onto the rolls. Covered the layers with cling wrap and put it into the freezer. After a couple of hours I poured most of the fudge sauce into the center of the vanilla ice cream layer, replaced the cling wrap and returned the whole thing to the freezer.
Home from work, I made my final ice cream layer for the cake. I added the coffee ice cream base to the ice cream maker and once it was finished churning I scooped the coffee ice cream into the void in the center of cake and leveled it off. I wrapped the cake very well in cling wrap and put it in the freezer to set up over night.
I had a blast creating my Swiss Swirl Ice Cream Cake. From picking the recipe for the cake to selecting my ice cream flavors, the whole process was wonderfully creative and inspiring! Now what to do with that remaining frozen Tiramisu log in the freezer...
