His favourite cake has always been Red Devil's Chocolate. And that, because it is his favourite, is often what I bake for his birthday. I don't myself care for the taste of it; I can always detect baking soda used in a cake and to me it tastes like soap. But he loves it. For this birthday, though, I had come across what I thought was an intriguing looking recipe from The Epicurious Cookbook, a Double Chocolate Layer Cake. I don't have a copy of that cookbook, but the recipe had been published in an issue of one of the daily newspapers we subscribe to.

I thought it looked good enough for a birthday cake. The recipe was complete with a complementary recipe for ganache frosting, which called for heavy cream. So I bought whipping cream and set it aside for that purpose. And then, I informed my husband of my intention for his birthday cake. He offered the opinion that he thought he'd like, this time around, a chocolate jelly-roll. I often bake one around the holiday season, but hadn't, this year.

So, a chocolate jelly-roll it was to be. The recipe is simple enough, it just calls for a sponge-cake type batter. The ingredients are a cup of sifted cake flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1/4 tsp. salt, three eggs, 1/4 cup cold water, 1 cup sugar, 1 tsp.vanilla.  The eggs are whipped until yellow-foamy, then the sugar added, and the cold water and vanilla, and finally the dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. The additional preparation is to line a sided cookie sheet with wax paper. And to pour the batter evenly over the wax paper, from side to side of the cookie sheet, and to bake in a hot (400-degree F.) oven for twelve to fifteen minutes, until fully set and dry.

Then the large flat cake is turned out of the cookie sheet it has baked on. Turned out onto a waiting strip of wax paper sifted with icing sugar or fine white sugar. And then the wax paper on which the cake has been baked is gently pulled off the cake, and the cake rolled, along with the wax paper that itself is sitting on a clean tea towel, into its jelly-roll shape. The rolled cake-wax-paper-tea towel is left to cool.

When it has cooled completely it can then be carefully unrolled, and filled. Of course that whipped cream I had bought needed to be used and it made for a perfect filling for the chocolate roll. When the flattened cake (still remembering its rolled-up shape) has been spread with the filling, the cake is then re-rolled. Spread over the top I put a chocolate-butter icing, and the birthday cake was done.

I'll keep the other recipe around, for the double chocolate layer cake, and no doubt eventually find a use for it.