Beyond Rice and Tofu

Strawberry season. Love it! And there have been a lot of great strawberry recipes posted out there in the blogosphere lately. So of course I needed to try some. Luckily this week I had two excuses to make some special sweet treats.

For our monthly gluten free group potluck meeting, I decided to make Easy Sponge Cake from Kate over at Gluten Free Gobsmacked. Now I was taking a chance, waiting until the morning before the noon meeting to make this, but I managed, with only one small mishap (and I always have a back up plan!). You never know…

I followed Kate’s recipe exactly. Well, almost exactly. Her instructions don’t say to accidentally break your sixth (of eight) egg yolk into the egg whites. Eek!! As you may know, if you have slightest bit of yolk in your whites, they won’t whip. Unfortunately I only had nine eggs. And now six were contaminated. So I ran to the store at 10am for more eggs. And I hate buying eggs you see, because we have our own hens! But I had saved back these eggs knowing I was going to use them because we sell our extra eggs to friends. I should have had a back-up plan because unfortunately, hens do not lay on-demand.

Standing in front of the eggs at the store, I thought about only buying six eggs, since that was all I needed, but I was afraid I would screw it up again. So I bought a full dozen. But then in the two minutes driving home, I realized I could make things easier on myself.

So, I got the new eggs and sat them in a bowl of lukewarm water in order to bring them to room temp, fast. Then I pulled out another measuring cup and one-by-one, I broke my whites into the measuring cup and one-by-one, I put the white into the bigger mixing bowl. Just in case. And it worked. No more mishaps. Lesson learned. But now I have a lot of extra eggs.

Kate’s recipe was super easy, just like she says. I used my largest jelly roll pan and it was almost too much for the pan. And I should have let it cool longer – but I was on a deadline! It probably would have come off the parchment paper better if I could have waited longer. And the cake smelled wonderful while baking – all those yummy extracts were great!

I also chose to roll mine from the long side, as Kate suggests. I can’t imagine rolling it the other way – it would have been a huge roll! I filled mine with lightly macerated strawberries and whipped cream.

As I said, the roll was quite large, more than 3 inches in diameter. It was almost too large to cut – you’ll need your long bread knife. And I had to cut it in half in order to fit it on the largest platter I have – you’ll just have to excuse its tiki theme.

I think next time I may make half a recipe and try to get the cake slightly thinner so that it rolls more easily. And has more room for a filling.

So, in the end, I made it to the meeting on time and with a lovely dessert in hand. Of course it was gone instantly! Luckily for my husband, I left a slice at home for him before I left. (It’s the picture on top here.) He agreed, delicious! I WILL be making this again!