You’d have to read to find out what this cake is all about! or what is IN this cake!

Bubur Cha Cha bombe

It’s time for the Daring Bakers again! This month, it’s ice cream related, so I knew I had to give it a go. 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.-

Where as I decided to make it an Asian inspired flavour. This cake basically consists of a few elements. Swiss roll cake, 2 types of ice cream and originally, hot fudge. But I reckon fudge wouldn’t really work well in what I’m trying to replicate. So I used jelly instead. Yeah, jelly. Don’t know if it works, but will try anyway.

My idea was based around sweet potato Ice cream at first. See, a couple of years back when I was in Sydney (I talk about it all the time. I NEED to buy an air ticket back there, right now! By now, it means, when there’s zero air-fare) I love going to Strathfield, because I stay just 10 minutes away from there, to dine at the Korean restaurants and get some kimchi and stuffs. So u know, as usual, we went checking and I saw this sweet potato ice cream stick. OK weird, but I needed to try it at an instant. Bought and it’s probably the best sweet potato ice cream ever. Ok maybe best weird ice cream flavour, yeah!

Up until now, I haven’t had any which is similar to it. I went over to this shop that sells Japanese sweets and snacks. Found a sweet potato ice cream, in a cup tho. It was … disappointing. So I reckon, I should make my own! Coincidentally, this cake for the Daring Bakers’ Challenge needed ice cream! yay! even better. But it needed 2 ice creams.

What could possibly pair up with sweet potato, and bubur cha cha came to my mind. Bubur Cha Cha is a nyonya dessert of coconut milk with sweet potato (yellow, purple and/or orange), yam (taro), and sago. triple check! coconut, sweet potato and yam!

So there it went, Sweet potato ice cream and Yam Ice Cream will be the base flavours. As for the Swiss roll, initially I wanted to make pandan, but I decided with a simple Japanese Swiss Cake recipe instead with whipped cream. Mainly because I ddin’t want the pandan to overpower the ice cream flavour. But instead, I had some pandan jelly in the fridge, I layered it in between just so it gives a light hint of pandan aroma, just like Bubur Cha Cha itself. Bad idea with the pandan jelly. It just cross my mind that jelly = water = ice .. So the cake had little icicle in between.

Japanese Swiss Roll

(BISCUIT LEGER A LA CREME)

4 eggs, separated

70g caster sugar

60ml milk

40g corn flour / cornstarch

2 tbsp all purpose flour

1. Heat milk in a saucepan. In a bowl, whisk egg yolks, 40g sugar, corn flour and all purpose flour. When the milk is scalding, pour into the mixing bowl and whisk constantly till mixture is well incorporated. Leave aside while you make meringue.

2. In a mixing bowl, whisk egg whites till foamy. Gradually add in the remaining caster sugar and whisk till soft peak.

3. Fold in egg whites into egg yolk mixture gently in 2 or 3 batches.

4. Pour into 20cm x 20cm pan. Spread evenly. Bake at 180 C for 12-15 minutes. Once it’s baked, remove from oven and let it cool for 5-10 minutes.

5. Sprinkle some caster sugar on a clean and dry towel, or parchment paper. Invert the cake out onto the towel / paper. Remove lining, then gently roll it (without any filling inside) just so the shape stays and it doesn’t break when you roll it again later.

6. Whip cream and spread thinly on the cake. If cake is too wide, cut into 2 horizontally so the swiss roll later won’t be  too huge. Roll again with the parchment paper and leave it in the fridge to cool.

7. Cut into slices to serve. Or for this cake, line the inner part of a bowl covered with cling film.

The texture of this cake is actually pretty good. As there’s corn flour instead of flour, the texture is finer, soft and less crumbly. It actually doesn’t break that easily when rolling. It also comes in a pretty hue of sunshine. Next time, I think this would make a nice strawberry shortcake cake base. Even after freezing it, it still is a little cakey and spongey. Not frozen like a piece of rock!

So the next thing to do once the swiss rolls are hard enough to cut, Line them in a bowl. Try to fit them as closely as possible to prevent ice cream from leaking out! After that, fill in with ice cream, fudge or other fillings, and more ice cream of another flavour! It may look messy at first, but after you turn it upside down onto a plate, it actually looks okay.

Don’t you like the colours ? It’s golden yellow, green and violet. Pretty cute eh!! So for the ice cream, I used the same recipe I used for the durian ice cream; meaning it’s eggless but thickened with glutinous rice flour instead. It was purely experimental as I couldn’t find a sweet potato ice cream. Oh maybe there is, but I’m a bit sick of these never ending supply of egg whites in the freezer!! Please give me some ideas on what to make with egg whites apart from pavlova, macaron and meringue cookies.

I don’t mean to cheat, but for Project 52 Ice Cream Mondays week 13 and 14, the recipes would be sweet potato ice cream and yam ice cream. I CAN”T be making any more ice cream this week after making 2.. But hey, forgive me ? 🙁 We still have 38 more weeks to go !!

I could have left it in the freezer a little longer so the yam ice cream at the bottom stays in shape. Oh well, couldn’t wait anymore!!

Ok and this is this month’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge. I wonder what’s up next month 😉