GBBO week 7 – vanilla and speculoos roulade with strawberries and cream

img_8886It’s already week 7 of the Great British Bake Off, and the latest challenges were based around desserts. Options were a signature roulade, a technical marjolaine, or a showstopping range of petite mousse desserts. Once again I had to cater to Andrew’s fussiness so couldn’t make a marjolaine which is meringue, nor mousse – Andrew is not a fan of either. The marjolaine did look fantastic though so I’d love to give it a try sometime.

Recently I made this recipe from Gino D’Acampo, and I thought the delicious mascarpone cream would work very well as a filling for a roulade, so decided to give it a go. Tesco, who are supporting the Great Bloggers Bake Off, kindly sent me a voucher so that I could buy the ingredients from one of their stores, so I popped along to buy mascarpone, vanilla extract, eggs, strawberries, and Biscoff speculoos biscuits (which are delicious!).

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I always have the other ingredients in the house (flour and caster sugar) and happened to have some double cream left over from a recent recipe so finished that up on the roulade as well.

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The roulade sponge is inspired by this recipe from Rachel Allen, and the marscapone cream is inspired by Gino’s recipe.

img_8776Vanilla and speculoos roulade with strawberries and cream – serves 8

  • For the sponge – 4 eggs, 125g caster sugar, 2tbsp warm water, 1tsp vanilla extract, 125g plain flour
  • For the filling – 250g tub mascarpone cheese, 2tbsp caster sugar, 2 egg yolks, 1tsp vanilla extract, 6 lotus biscuits
  • For the topping – 100ml double cream, 1tbsp icing sugar, 1tsp vanilla extract, strawberries

First make the sponge. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees, and line a 25x38cm swiss roll tin with non stick baking parchment.

Whisk together the eggs, sugar, water and vanilla until light and fluffy (this took a good five minutes in my KitchenAid freestanding mixer, so definitely get the electrics out). Then sieve the flour into the mixture and gently fold it in (the aim is to keep as much air in the mixture as possible – I never normally bother with sieving but in this instance I though it was good to stick to the rules).

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 15 minutes.

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My swiss roll took 15 minutes on the dot and was springy to the touch when ready – you might just want to peep into the oven at 12 minutes to see how it’s getting on, as I would imagine that an over baked swiss roll sponge is a dry swiss roll sponge (no fat in the mixture, you see).

Lay out more baking parchment on your worktop and sprinkle with caster sugar. When you take your sponge out of the oven, turn it out onto the sugared parchment and remove the paper the sponge was baked in. Then roll the hot sponge into the familiar roulade shape and allow to cool (I rolled the short end, and yes, mine did crack).

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Make your roulade filling by mixing together all of the ingredients except the biscuits. Crumble the biscuits into the mixture. Spread the cheese mixture onto the cooled sponge.

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Re-roll it.

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Top with the chantilly cream (whisk together double cream, icing sugar and vanilla), and strawberries.

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Eat and enjoy! And then check out some of the recipes by my fellow bloggers.

As usual I am joining in with Jenny’s challenge over at Mummy Mishaps. Check out all of the recipes in the link up here.

Mummy Mishaps

4 Replies to “GBBO week 7 – vanilla and speculoos roulade with strawberries and cream”

  1. Love these flavours, it sounds delicious, perfect for dessert x

  2. jennypaulin says: Reply

    that looks lovely and i love the use of speculoos wishing the sponge! thank you for linking up x

  3. Scrummy!

  4. […] Vanilla and speculoos roulade with strawberries and cream from It’s not easy being greedy […]

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