Ice Cream-Cake Roll

Now for the highlight of my Easter dinner: The Ice Cream-Cake Roll.

Now, So-Good Meals Meals Men Like It’s Lamb Night! provided a recipe to make an Ice Cream-Cake Roll from scratch. And in that recipe it specifically said to use “his favorite flavor.” So since Cleve was the only man around (excluding Brian, but he can’t have dairy), I asked him what his favorite flavor was (although I already knew): lime sherbet.

So I wondered, “can you make an ice cream cake roll with sherbet?” And then I Googled “can you make an ice cream cake roll with sherbet?” And I came upon the following recipe from betterrecipes.com:

Lime Sherbet Angel Food Cake Roll

Ingredients:
1 box (1 Lb) White Angel Food Cake Mix
1¼ cups Cold Water
Powdered Sugar
5 cups Lime Sherbet, softened
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 11 x 17 x 1-inch jelly roll pan with parchment paper.
2. Beat cake mix and cold water with electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Beat on medium speed 1 minute. Spread the batter in prepared pan.
3. Bake jelly rolly pan 20 to 25 minutes, or until top springs back lightly when touched in center. Cool jelly roll pan 10 minutes. Loosen cake from edges of pan. Turn upside down onto towel sprinkled with powdered sugar. Carefully remove parchment paper. Trim off stiff edges of cake, if necessary. Carefully roll hot cake and towel from narrow end. Cool completely on cooling rack, about 1 hour.
4. Unroll cake and remove towel. Spread lime sherbet in an even layer on cake. Roll up carefully. Place roll, seam side down, on a large piece of foil. Wrap in foil; freeze at least 6 hours until firm.
5. Remove from freezer and cut roll into 3/4-inch slices. Store wrapped in freezer.
www.betterrecipes.com © Copyright 2011, Meredith Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

So screw you, So-Good Meals! If the Lord intended me to make this cake from scratch then He would not have invented boxed angel food cake mix. Am I right?

I didn’t use all of the batter, however. I was scared that the cake would overflow in the oven, much like the lemon pudding cake I made way-back-when. That was a volumetric disaster (am I using that word correctly?). And to cover my ass I did line the oven shelf with some tin foil.

So I checked on the cake at 20 minutes. By some act of God it didn’t runneth over the sides of the jelly roll pan. But it also needed some more time because I did the whole poke-it-and-see-if-it-springs-back thing and it didn’t. Spring back, that is. I checked a few times more and all-in-all I think that it was in the oven for about 30 minutes total. This doesn’t mean that it would always take 30 minutes. Let’s keep in mind that I am using the temperamental apartment-sized oven.

Although there were a lot of steps, this recipe is totally worth it! Here was the finished product :

How impressive does that look? It’s an actual frickin’ roll. It’s so pretty!

And it was all kinds of tasty–sweet and soft and light and limey. And it looked absolutely lovely–unlike many of my other baking attempts. And there were only 4 ingredients. And does water really count as an ingredient? I don’t think so.

I plan on using this recipe with a lot of other fillings–ice cream, jelly, frosting, pudding, whipped cream. The possibilities are endless. You could LAYER things. I don’t know if it would work with other types of cake mixes, but it’s worth a shot.

Now go to the store, get yourself a box of cake mix and make one of these for someone you love!