Matcha Swiss Rolls, for Food52

When it comes to cake, I’m a bit boring – I prefer cakes that aren’t too sweet, too fancy, or too frilly. I love looking at a beautiful, intricately decorated cake, marveling at the baker’s talent, but when it comes to baking my own cake, I always find myself veering towards the simple. Part of it is, I admit, my own disastrous experiences with making fancy cakes, but that’s neither here nor there! I’m so happy to share this matcha swiss roll with you – it’s kind of a hybrid between a sponge cake and the classic swiss roll. A whipped meringue is gently incorporated into the batter, giving it its signature light and fluffy texture. This is an incredibly versatile recipe. I’ve done variations both in flavors and form: you can switch out the matcha and add in… ground black sesame seeds, for example, to make a black sesame roll cake. As for form, my favorite is to surprise people with a vertical roll cake. It’s made in the exact same method, except that when the cake is assembled, the cake is cut into three long strips and then rolled one after the other. You can see an example here. I call it the vertical cake roll.

This cake is inspired by my Japanese language class in high school. That’s right – I’ve been using this recipe as my go-to not-too-sweet cake for over five years. It started when I was first interested in baking. My teacher had a cute Japanese baking magazine filled with pretty images of pretty cakes. I immediately honed in on a fluffy-looking cake roll and decided to make it a project: to translate it and make it! As a non-experienced baker, I was flummoxed by the different measurements, the requirement for a scale, and the unfamiliar ingredients. Eventually, with the help of my teacher, I came up with a workable recipe and tried my hand with it. It was good, but not what I’d expected. So, I tabled it. Several years past, and I’d learned more about baking cakes, whipping up meringues, and other tidbits of information that helped me understand what I did wrong and how the recipe needed to be changed. To make a long story short, a couple of years after my initial translated recipe, I was able to struggle my way through many iterations and finally came up with a light, fluffy cake recipe, which is up on Food52’s Small Batch column!