mulberryshoots

A couple of years ago, our favorite bakery in town was sold. Although the new owners kept making the cinnamon raisin swirl bread that my husband ate for breakfast all his life, the cinnamon was thinner and the raisins were hard to find. Likewise, the chocolate roll with filling that they made suffered the same consequences: very thin filling, irregularly placed so that one end of the roll was bare of filling — all the while the price went up a dollar per roll, and then another. This was their way of doing business which quickly drove this traditionally popular bakery into the ground.

Now, it’s closed, temporarily or not, but I’ve begun making the cinnamon swirl raisin bread with good results, using a challah bread dough recipe rich with eggs, golden raisins and an egg wash to hold the sugar/cinnamon swirl filling in place. Powdered sugar on top after the loaves cooled. Now that I’ve become comfortable with making these loaves, I decided to try my hand at the chocolate roll.

I’ve made jelly roll cakes before so the process of baking a thin sponge cake, rolled up with parchment while still warm was familiar to me. The filling ingredients, though, had me stumped. I looked at a few recipes online that specified a simple whipped cream filling that didn’t sound like what I had liked about the filling. As I recall, it was more robust than just whipped cream and it didn’t taste like cream cheese nor butter cream filling either.

Finally, I came across some recipes that sounded perhaps like the filling I remembered so fondly. It required butter, a dab of Crisco, Marshmallow Fluff (believe it or not) and powdered sugar. The combo of shortening plus the marshmallow and confectioners sugar seemed to make the filling more robust than just whipped cream.

So that’s what I made this afternoon. Can’t wait to try it out tonight for dessert. And, trust me, it wasn’t that hard to make! More creations resulting from the quarantine!