July Daring Bakers Challenge: Swiss Roll Ice Cream Cake

Another month, another recipe. The end of the month always seems to sneak up on me, and while I have great ideas of variations on the recipe, I end up with no time to test them out! This month, I had the added challenge of a new job (which has fewer hours and considerably better pay, but also 150km in commute per day), and I all but purchased a new car on posting day! Tomorrow I face the wonderful world of insurance, and hopefully, if all goes to plan, I will be the happy and proud owner of a new 2010 Toyota Corolla S by Tuesday. But on with the recipe!
The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.-
This recipe is basically death in a bowl for me. I'm lactose-intolerant, and I think I probably went through half a bottle of lactaid while making all the components of the recipe. It also took me four separate nights of baking/cooking, which isn't bad, considering the aforementioned car-buying. As of now, the completed bombe (which I have been informed is also known as Arctic Roll to the Brits), is waiting in my freezer for people with a far better appreciation of ice cream to come and test. Once my parents get back from vacation, I will be sure to post a picture of the final product in all its sliced and nommed glory!

Until then, you will have to settle for some in-the-making photos.

By far the hardest part of this recipe is the chocolate sponge. First, you have to have the patience to let the eggs and sugar whip forever. Then, when the cake comes out of the pan, you have to wrap it in a towel so it cools in the right shape. For future reference, you probably shouldn't leave the cake like that for too long. Otherwise, it sticks to the cloth, and looks like this when you unroll it to put in the filling:
And then when you line the bowl, it looks REALLY messy.

The ice cream was fairly simple. More than anything, it just required the patience to keep coming back and checking on it to whisk it smooth again. The chocolate recipe was a little sweet for me - next time, I will definitely go for more cocoa and less sugar!
By far, the best part of the whole recipe for me was the fudge sauce, though. Even if it took a little more cornstarch to thicken, and seemed to take forever to do so, I was rewarded with a really nice sauce when I was done. I did make one modification here. Our house has been going through a little bit of a phase... everyone's favourite spread: NUTELLA! I reduced the amount of sugar and butter I added to the sauce, and added a big spoonfull of nutella. The sauce ended up nutty and chocolatey and was everything good in the world about fudge sauce. I even had some left over that I will be saving to pour over ice cream in the future! I was also smart enough to use a small fruit bowl wrapped in plastic to create an indentation in the vanilla layer of ice cream...

Which is now filled with nutella fudge sauce, and that's probably what I'm looking forward to the most!

In the future I'd like to try and make this in a tube pan and fill it with a moat of fudge. The possibilities for this concept make me so excited.

I will keep you posted on how it looks on Tuesday!