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.
The recipes Sunita provided for the different elements of the challenge can be found here.
What I made looks different from what you see on the Daring Bakers web site for a couple of reasons: our household's dietary needs and less than satisfactory results of two preliminary steps which, coupled with the fact that I prepared the dessert two days before the deadline, nudged my creativity in new directions. In the end, I was happy with what I made: a variation filled with gelato of the Italian dessert called zuccotto, hence the title of the post.
For the outermost layer, I made a sponge cake with the following ingredients:
- 3 eggs, separated
- 90 g sugar
- 70 g flour
- 20 g potato starch flour (fecola di patate)
- a pinch of cream of tartar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff peaks form. Beat egg yolks with sugar until they reach a mousse-like consistency. Sift flours and fold into yolks. Fold egg whites in three batches. Spread on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (the amount of batter I had did not cover the whole sheet: I spread it until I had a rectangular shape of the desired thickness). Bake at 350 F until pale gold and springy to the touch (check after 12 minutes and estimate the amount of time still needed; for me that was another 6 minutes or so). Turn onto a damp kitchen towel sprinkled with sugar and peel away the parchment paper. Delicately roll from the short side. I ended up not making the roll as in the original recipe, but this step was still helpful, since it was then easy to line the glass bowl with pieces of the cake.
For the inner layers I used the following:
- strawberry ice cream flavoured with balsamic vinegar (gelato di fragole all'aceto balsamico)
- green tea ice cream (gelato al tè verde)
- blueberry and buttermilk sherbet (sorbetto al mirtillo e latticello)
I made some adjustments to the original recipe for the strawberry ice cream: half a cup of sugar, one teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, half a cup of whipping cream. The recipe for the green tea ice cream is mine and I will describe it in a separate post. The color reflects that of the matcha (powdered green tea) I used.
Once all the elements were ready, the assembly was fairly easy. A closer look at the inner structure shows the organization of the layers. If you'd have time to plan ahead, you may want to consider this dessert: it really gets your guests' attention.
A special thank you goes to our host for her choice and her efforts. It was a nice challenge. I hope you will take the time to go around and look at the creative output of my talented fellow Daring Bakers.
Hear me pronounce the words on the zuccotto gelato audio file [mp3] or go to the zuccotto gelato audio page for more listening options.
