This recipe has become a family dinner favorite. I love this, because it looks so much more complicated than it really is, now that I have found the right base recipes. This recipe is very heavily based on Stella Parks’ Old-Fashioned Jelly Roll recipe on Serious Eats and I want to give her full credit. The only reason I am posting my own version is to remind myself of the tweaks I made because her flavor profile is very different from ours.
Basically, I use her sponge cake recipe, substituting gluten-free 1:1 flour for the whole wheat flour, reducing the vanilla and adding 3/4 tsp of lemon oil. We also don’t bother toasting the sugar in our version as the lemon flavor is enough. (We do find toasted sugar life-changing for meringues, which I never liked until I tried Parks’ meringue mushrooms—these things are absolutely incredible and may be my favorite part of the Yule log, which is saying a lot.
Once the cake is done and cooled, we spread with a layer of lemon curd, which is my take on an Ina Garten recipe and then top that with a layer of strawberry whipped cream using freeze-dried strawberries, another Parks recipe. We roll it up, top with more of the whipped cream, garnish with freeze-dried strawberries, and voilà.
I am not going to repeat all of Parks’ meticulous tips for how to get the right consistency on the sponge and her reasoning behind them—I strongly recommend going to the source for that. We have made it enough that the instructions I give here will be sufficient. The magic in my version is only the lovely, lovely combination of strawberry and lemon and the assurance that gluten-free 1:1 flour works wonderfully well.
A note on the freeze-dried fruit for the whipped cream—I really hated taking freeze-dried strawberry slices and whizzing them up in the food processor with the sugar. It caused so much dust which stuck to the sides of the food processor and there was definitely waste. Also, freeze-dried fruit in big chunks is more expensive than powder. I was so delighted to find that you can buy pre-ground powder. My favorite brand is Ahimsa, which turns out to be a Ukrainian brand. I hope that their farmland is ok as well as their staff and families! Their fruit powders are so vibrant in flavor, noticeably better than other brands. We really love their strawberry, raspberry and wild blueberry products and find them absolutely worth the investment. We use them in yogurt and smoothies, the whipped cream and our teen actually makes drinks with the powder and sparkling water.
- Make sure your oven rack is in the lower-middle position and preheat to 350 degrees F. Line a half-sheet pan with parchment paper and lightly coat with baking spray (not the kind with flour in it, just regular spray)
- Use the whisk attachment in a stand mixer and add the cold eggs, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Mix on medium-low until it’s all incorporated and there are starting to be small bubbles. With our mixer this only took a couple of minutes
- Bump up the speed to medium and whisk until you get to the ribbon stage, up to another 5 minutes
- Increase the speed to high and whisk until the mixture has roughly doubled in volume, is pale yellow and leaves a vortex pattern. Check the texture by raising the mixer head (or lowering the bowl depending on the style of mixer you have). The mixture should fall off the whisk slowly and mound up for a second before flattening out
- Reduce speed to medium-high and add the melted butter and extracts in a steady steam all at once then lower the speed again to medium-low and add the flour all at once. Mix until the flour is mostly incorporated. Turn off the mixer and use the whisk attachment to stir in the last bits of flour. Give the batter a couple of good stirs with a flexible spatula from bottom to top to make sure everything is even. The great thing about making this recipe gluten-free is that there is a bit more leeway with the mixing because you don’t have to worry about over-developing any gluten! You still need to be careful so you don’t knock all the air out of the eggs, of course.
- Spread the batter evenly over the lightly-coated parchment on the half-sheet pan. My teen and I love using an off-set spatula for this and it’s one of our favorite parts of the whole process. Do your best to get the batter to an even depth and smooth out the top
- Bake for about 10-12 minutes until the top is lightly browned and is firm but still a bit puffy. It should bounce back when you poke it lightly. We have learned to err on the side of slightly more done so that the cake doesn’t get too squishy
- Remove from the oven and put on a cooling rack then immediately cover the baking sheet tightly with foil. You will need two pieces of foil unless you’re using the giant kind. Covering with foil and letting cool to room temp is what allows you to avoid the whole “roll it up in a towel then unroll it and then leave it rolled and use powdered sugar” production which is fiddly and inconsistent. We’ve had great results with Parks’ foil technique. Let the cake cool until it gets to room temp or about 70 degrees F. We keep a cool house and leaving the cake for about 90 minutes is perfect. You can make your whipped cream while it’s cooling
STRAWBERRY WHIPPED CREAM INGREDIENTS
DIRECTIONS
- Put the fruit powder and sugar in a food processor and pulse to combine. If you’re using bigger pieces of fruit, you’ll need to pulverize it into a fine powder
- Pour in the whipping cream and stir with a flexible spatula to break up any pockets of powder/sugar
- Pulse until the mixture is very thick and dense and the consistency of Greek-style yogurt. I actually run it for 10-15 seconds, stir and then pulse thereafter to get it to my perfect consistency
- Remove the foil from the cake and, ideally, grab a partner to help you roll
- Spread the lemon curd evenly across the cake, leaving a small gap at the long edge furthest away from you if you like since the filling will migrate a bit as you roll
- Spread 2/3 of the strawberry whipped cream over the lemon curd, accepting the fact that it’ll mix a bit. You get to have more off-set spatula fun here
- Making sure that the baking sheet is oriented so that the long edge is facing you and you’ll be making a thinner, longer roll (I’ve made this mistake before, rolling from the short side, and it was hilarious—all the filling splodged out and it was ridiculously thick) and use the parchment to help you. The first roll sets the tone, so take a bit of extra time to make sure the first roll is nice and tight. Continue rolling up the cake, leaving the parchment out of it, until you get to the end
- This cake generously serves 12 and we only need to serve 8 at family dinner, so we take large-ish bits off of each end before moving to our serving plate, which means we have a nice, even roll. If you need to serve more people, just take off a small about from each end. You want your swirl to look its best. We keep the extra cake and have it later in the week as a special treat.
- Once you’ve trimmed your jelly roll, move it to your serving plate and decorate with the remaining 1/3 of the strawberry whipped cream. We don’t cover the ends because we like to show off our swirl. If your swirl isn’t quite a beautiful as you’d like, go ahead and cover the ends.
- Garnish with crumbled freeze-dried strawberries or whole slices of freeze-dried strawberries or edible flowers or whatever you like to make it pretty. You can also put some texture in the whipped cream with the offset spatula or a fork
- Refrigerate until about an hour before serving and get ready for oohs, ahhhhs and yums
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