Baking With Mom

I went home for a visit this past weekend.  I found some pictures of me as a young girl baking that I wanted to share with you, which I am sure you will get a kick out of.

Growing up I had 2 favourite desserts that my mom would make, which are still my favourites to this day.  One was the Mocha Frozen Cheesecake which I have mentioned earlier.  The second, is my Mother's Chocolate Cake Roll.  This past weekend we made it together!

We used vanilla sugar, which my mom makes on a regular basis.

The cake roll is a jelly roll, which is a light and airy cake, due to the fact that there is no fat in the cake.  The eggs get seperated then beaten and folded in together.  My mother also showed me the proper technique of folding, which is to "cut in the middle, bring it back up on the side".

When the cake comes out of the oven, you have to work quite quickly and fold the cake with a towel, so that the cake is trained to take that shape.

Once the cake has cooled, you can fill the cake with whipped cream, or even ice cream!

Then we iced it with chocolate icing, and decorated it with some cherries and toasted coconut.

Over the years my Mother makes coffee flavoured whipped cream, so that the cake roll is more of a Mocha Cakeroll.  The coffee flavoured whipped cream adds a richness and sophistication to the cake.  But since I was learning to make it with my Mom for the first time, I wanted to have it the way I remembered as a little girl (probably the age I was in the photos at the beginning of this entry).  It was everything I remembered.  I even snuck a piece to take with me when I left and ate in on the train ride back to Toronto. 

I wish my mother and I lived closer so that we could bake together more often.  It was a lot of fun, and I look forward to the next time we bake together!

Love from,
April's SweetShop