Holiday parties are comin’ at us big time and the pot luck food will be rolling to the table. Now’s the time to attend to your special food offering.

Is Bigger Really Better? So go big or go home, right? Actually, let’s go small and wonderful with this old-fashioned pumpkin roll — ‘cept without the pumpkin. Or maybe a jelly roll without the jelly. Okay, how about some awesome holiday cookies but without the cookies. Say what??

Introducing Grandma’s adorable (smaller) rolled cake! We’re subbing sweet potato puree for pumpkin puree to make an old-fashioned sweet potato rolled cake, just like the one Grandma used to make, ‘cept a tad better with a hint of citrus (and maybe even a splash of holiday cheer). Any way you roll with this, it’s gonna be fun to make and even more fun to serve.

What’s a roll cake? When it is frosted, rolled and sliced, it makes fun spiral cake slices.  Otherwise known as a roulade or a jelly roll (without the jelly) and even called a Swiss Roll, this is a super moist and lovable cake, I swear! Grandma’s recipe is more like a roulade or swiss roll because the eggs are whipped to lighten and lift the cake. But don’t tell Grandma that because she considered this a way-country creation. No fru-fru cakes for her!

It has my favorite spice in it… Allspice.  Although you can easily find the spice called Allspice (not a mixture of spices, but its own awesome spice) in stores, I took a few whole pods and used the mortar to quickly powder up some fine Jamaican Allspice for this cake. The flavor from a Jamaican pod of Allspice is enhanced with a fresh mortar grind and, I must say, it is right up there at the top of my favorite spice list!

See our blog post on how to make your own Homemade Pumpkin Spice Mix HERE.

I had to toss in a bit of tangerine zest and some tangerine juice for a little bright punch. Not because the cake called for it really (though it does brighten the flavors) but – who could resist using the first little tangerines of the season from my cute little urban garden? 

Because I love rolled cakes, it became my first choice for the annual Food Bloggers Los Angeles (FBLA) Annual Holiday Cookie Exchange Party. After all, cake that is small and soft and round with frosting tucked inside seems like a party, I mean, like a soft pillowy cookie to me. Or, at least, as close to cookie perhaps as cake can get, except perhaps for whoopie pies. What other cakes are good to use for cookies? Tell me in the Comments section below.

So — serve it up as a cake, or roll it differently and cut it for smaller rounds as “cookies” as I did for this event. Slathered up with traditional cream cheese frosting its great — but slathering it up with our special Vanilla Heirloom Custard Frosting, is even better, though I admit that I may have gotten carried away with the frosting. You really don’t need to spread that much custard frosting on this cake. I think I was just having too much fun with it.

Okay, let’s do this thang!

Grandma’s Holiday Spiced Sweet Roll Cake
This recipe makes 2 cakes to roll up and frost.
When sliced in the fashion described here, these 2 cakes make about 25 cake slices the size of a whoopie pie, about 3″ to 4″ in diameter.  If you roll the cakes from the other side of the cake, you will produce about 12 to 14 larger slices. You can also adjust the thickness of each slice for different quantities.

“Dry Bowl” Ingredients:
1-1/2 cups flour (we used King Arthur’s All-Purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder (we used Rumford’s)
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon Jamaican Allspice (we used a mortar to pound out about 6 pods)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (we used Saigon cinnamon)
1 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon salt (we used “Real” brand salt)”
1 teaspoon loosely packed, finely grated tangerine zest (substitute finely grated orange zest)

“Egg Bowl” Ingredients:
6 large eggs
2 cups granulated sugar
1-1/3 cups sweet potato puree
2 teaspoons fresh tangerine (or orange) juice

“Sprinkle-the-towels” ingredient:
½ cup powdered sugar (for sprinkling the rolling towels)

Tools Needed:
1 or 2 jelly roll pans (10” x 15”) We didn’t use a real jelly roll pan. Substitute a cookie sheet pan with a lip all around but decrease the cooking time up to 5 minutes for a thinner cake).
Electric mixer, preferably a counter mixer for long mixing time but a hand mixer is fine.
2 large mixing bowls
Whisk
Rubber spatula (for scraping dough into pans)
2 clean dishtowels (linen or tea towels work best, but any cotton or smooth dish towel works, or just use parchment or wax paper or plastic wrap).
Optional: Offset knife for spreading dough but a regular kitchen knife will do as well.
Measuring cups and spoons

Prep the oven, pan(s) and rolling towels:
Set the oven rack to middle position and pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Using a jelly roll pan (I used a smallish cookie pan with a lip and put the second batch in the same pan after removing the first cake), but you could use a larger cookie pan with a lip around it resulting in a slightly thinner cake dough. If you use a larger cookie pan you must shorten the cooking time so watch carefully starting at 8 minutes to be sure the cake doesn’t over cook.

Use wax paper to line the cake pan, creasing the corners and edges as much as possible without tearing the paper so corners will bend. Spray the wax paper with cooking spray.

Use a sifting tool to layer two smooth clean dish towels with powdered sugar on a large flat clean surface.

Shake, shake, shake!

Dry ingredients bowl:
In a large mixing bowl, measure out all dry ingredients and use a whisk to fully combine.

If you like an amazing Allspice, you’ll want to mortar about 6 pods of Jamaican Allspice (it only takes a few minutes to produce an amazing dark powder and you only need ½ teaspoon).

The tangerine zest may not technically be considered a dry ingredient but it works best to add this to the flour mixture.

Dry mix all the ingredients together and add:
The prepared orange zest

Wet “Egg Bowl” ingredients:
Bring 6 large eggs to room temperature (or not) by placing the whole eggs in their shells un-cracked in a bowl of warm water for about 10 minutes, or “leave them set” in the mixing bowl on the counter for for 20 minutes until the chill subsides. This is optional but it does seem to make them fluffier.

Beat eggs in mixer on high-speed for 5 to 7 minutes until at least doubled in volume. Eggs will increase in volume while they thicken and lighten in color to a pale yellow.

When the eggs are light and as thick like a smoothie or malted milkshake, you will see the egg run off the beaters in a thick trail.

Beat the sugar into beaten eggs on high-speed for an additional 3 minutes.

Beat the sweet potato puree into the egg mixture on medium speed until fully blended.

Combining wet and dry ingredients:
Use a whisk (do not fold with a spatula) to combine dry ingredients a little at a time into the batter, being sure to get out any lumps.

Preparing the cake batter in the pans:
Use one-half of the batter in each cake pan that has been lined with wax paper and sprayed with cooking spray (one of mine was thicker than the other but you could weigh or make in half batches to have an exact match)

Smooth the dough as much as possible and be sure to fill each corner because the batter will not “spread” in the oven during baking – so what you see is what you’ll get.  Bang the batter in the pan (hard) on counter hard a few times before putting in oven in order to get the bubbles to rise to the top and burst. Let the batter sit for a couple of minutes on the counter to let more bubbles rise to the top and bang it again on the counter to help the bubble rise to the top. Use a toothpick to pop any stubborn large bubbles.

Bake This Cake!
Put the cake pan in the centered rack in the pre-heated 375-degree oven.

At about 5 minutes into baking time, rotate he pan once in oven quickly without losing too much oven heat to be sure both sides of cake cook evenly.

At about 10 minutes into baking time, quickly check doneness of the cake by very lightly touching the center top to see if the batter is still tacky or if it is done – when the cake very lightly springs back to the touch.

I tested my cake at 10 minutes, 12 minutes and 13 minutes. For the slightly larger cake I made, 14 minutes total was required. Maximum amount of baking time will likely be 15 minutes.

Out of the oven – now the fun begins!
The hot cake is very spongy and easy to handle and easy to roll when it is warm (but it will likely break if it cools before trying to roll (but try putting it in a microwave on high for a few seconds to warm it if it gets away from you and cools before rolling – and let us know in the Comments if this worked for you).

Removing and rolling the cake:
Your kitchen is now filled with the heavenly aroma of a spice cake. The cake is softly springing back to the touch and a toothpick comes out clean at the center of the cake.

And here’s the second one hot from the oven…

Flip the cake upside down onto heavily powdered-sugar-coated tea towel. (You will get some powder dust when the cake flips onto the powdered towel so proceed gently.)

Remove the wax paper, paying careful attention to the corners and edges so as not to tear the cake.

Sift a heavy coat of powdered sugar over the bottom’s-up side of cake. The powdered sugar keeps the cake from sticking to the towel.

For “cookies” or smaller side desserts: Roll up the cake in the towel starting with the longest end (not the narrow end) so the rolls will be smaller than normal.

For a larger “main event roll cake”: Roll up the cake in the towel starting with the short end so the roll will be thick.

Now that it is cooled (or even cold), it is time to unwind this puppy as far as it will go without breaking. This is the strange shape of cake when it is awaiting a slather of custard frosting.

Place towel-rolled cake(s) on a wire rack on the counter to thoroughly cool to the touch, about 40 minutes before frosting. To store a bit longer, remove the towel and wrap it up tight in plastic wrap to store in the refrigerator.

Use an off-set spatula or the back of a tablespoon to spread the vanilla custard frosting over the cake and into the curving folds on either side. BTW, I think I got a little carried away with the custard frosting. I could have used half as much, ha! That was me and my slightly sweet tooth talkin’!

This is how she’ll be dressed for success. Now all we have to do is chill and slice her. This is a super easy travel cake when left whole to slice at the party…or you can slice ahead and pack-er up in baking pans.

I arranged my adorable slices with a few sprigs from the tangerine tree and some fun holiday lights tucked around the cake plate.

Time to check out the finest cookie recipes from some awesome food bloggers!

An amazing array of delectable holiday cookies from the fabulous Food Bloggers Los Angeles (FBLA) cookie team!

• Coffee Malted Cookies Drizzled with Dulce de Leche by Dana Levin Shrager of “Foodie Goes Healthy“
• French Lemon Cookies by Fay Levy from her book, Fresh from France: Dessert Sensations
• Citrus Poppy-seed Cookies by Barbara Hansen
• Salted Dulce de Leche Macaroons by Valentina M. Kenney Wein of Cooking On The Weekends
• Chocolate Cherry Nut Bark by Kelly Page of TastingPage
• Caramel Walnut Cookies by Barbara Hansen of Table Conversation
• Pumpkin Coconut Latte cookies by Nancy Eisman of Plant-based 411
• Double Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies by Jeanne Ponessa Fratello of The Jolly Tomato
• Ginger Snap Sandwiches Filled with Coconut Cream by Judy Lyness of My Well Seasoned Life
• Oatmeal and Cream Cheese Cherry Cookies by Cathy Nelson Arkle of She Paused 4 Thought
• Oatmeal, Coconut Chocolate Chip and Almond “Everything Free” Cookies by Mindy Schleger of Foodfitter
• Chocolate Chip Cookies by Tobias Oerum of Diabetes Strong
• Paleo Coconut and Almond Cookies by Jamie Lebowitz of @Lebowfit 

Thank you for exploring Grandma’s old-fashioned rolled cake recipe and please check out the cookie exchange recipes or the FBLA blogger sites. These food bloggers are such awesome cooks!

Stay warm and cozy! And happy vintage cake baking to you!

Best,

Leslie

You may also enjoy:

Betty’s Fresh Banana Layer Cake Cake by BakeThisCake.com

Applejack Spice Cake by BakeThisCake.com

Mary Lincoln’s Vanilla Almond Courting Cake by BakeThisCake.com