Banana Roll

Wow! My first recipe! I did my best to translate it well enough for everybody to understand it so please don’t be too critical. Feel free to correct any of my mistakes and to ask questions if something is not clear. Anyways, this roll was made during the European Football Championship 2008 in honor of our (Croatian) national team, during halftime (Croatia vs Germany).

Banana Roll

Ingredients

  • Cake:
  • 3 eggs
  • 100 g sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 50 g all purpose flour
  • 25 g cornstarch
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • Filling:

  • 40 grams chocolate pudding mix
  • 1 tbsp cornstarch
  • 5 tbsp sugar
  • 500 ml milk
  • 1/2 bar (some 40 grams) of dark chocolate (optional)
  • 3-4 tbsp whipped cream
  • Other:

  • 2 bananas
  • whipped cream for decorating
  • Nutella spread (or any other hazelnut-based sweet spread)

Instructions

  1. Cake:
  2. Beat in eggs with sugar till they double their volume and you can’t feel sugar between your fingers. Add vanilla extract. Mix flour, cornstarch and baking powder and stir this mixture into eggs.
  3. Grease jelly roll pan (mine is 30×40 cm or 11.5×15.5 inches) with margarine (sides too)
  4. Place a sheet of parchment paper on buttered pan.
  5. Pour mixture onto pan.
  6. Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius (392 F).
  7. Bake for 8 min. When cake is done turn upside down on clean wet towel that is dusted with sifted powdered sugar. Remove parchment paper and tightly roll cake (with the wet towel) from the longer end. Leave rolled in towel to cool.
  8. Filling:
  9. In a bowl mix pudding powder, sugar, cornstarch and then add 5-6 tbsp of cold milk and stir well to get a smooth mass.
  10. Bring the rest of the milk to boiling and melt chocolate in it if you decided to add dark chocolate. Than pour into milk the pudding mixture stirring all the time with a wisker. Cook on low heat until thick enough. Fill your sink with cold water, place the bowl with pudding in it and cool it stirring all the time with a wisker (some 10 minutes). When the pudding cools stir in 3-4 tbsp of whipped cream (it has to be whipped until very stiff) to make the filling spreadable.
  11. Unroll the cake when cool (it won’t be flat anymore but you will be able to work with it), spread a thin layer of nutella on the cake, than spread chocolate pudding filling over it, but leave some filling to cover the roll from the outside/for decorating. Place bananas along the longer side of the cake and then roll the cake as tightly as you can to form a long roll again. Cover the whole roll with the rest of the filling and decorate with whipped cream (with added food coloring). It’s best to leave in the fridge over night before serving. Please see my photos (Banana roll) to see the end product, it should help you understand how to roll the cake if my English is not clear enough
    :)