Arctic roll

by Barry Lewis

Prep time
60 mins
Cook time
10 mins

Ingredients

50g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling

2 large eggs

50g plain flour

1tsp vanilla extract

2tbsp jam

2 ice cream tubs of your choice

Here’s a yummy little recipe for you that is actually from my 2nd cookbook, so it’s a bit of an exclusive! This is a homemade arctic roll that is part recipe, part food hack. It’s so simple and quite fun to make too, you’ll love it! Essentially an ice cream spin on a swiss roll to a certain degree that tastes brilliant and you can customise to your liking. The recipe is split into 3 parts, the outer sponge, a jam filling and an ice cream core, all rolled into a frozen tasty log and given that ice cream tubs do that already shape it mostly for you, it’s a really quick thing to chuck together and put in the freezer until you need it!

Start off by adding your sugar to a mixing bowl and cracking in the eggs. Whisk with an electric whisk for a good 5 minutes until the mixture has doubled in size and is pale and fluffy. Now add in the flour and vanilla extract, stir through until thickened and smooth. Pour the mixture onto a lined swiss roll tin and spread out, it should be pretty thin, but it will thicken slightly when baked.

Place into an oven pre-heated to 180c or equivalent (see conversion charts) and bake for roughly 6-8 minutes to firm up, you do not want to brown it just get it to a light sponge. Whilst it’s baking tear off a sheet of baking parchment larger than the tin and sprinkle sugar on top of it, when the sponge is done from the oven tip it out onto the sugar layered baking parchment so the cake side is facing down and hits the sugar.

Keep both the pieces of baking parchment on for the moment and roll the cake up into a roll of carpet and allow to cool fully rolled up. This will make rolling easier later and prevent it cracking.

Meanwhile cut the ice cream out of the cartons as best as you can to maintain the shape, push the two ice creams together to make one large log of ice cream, wrap in cling film and roll briefly like a rolling pin to get a consistent tube shape. Place in the freezer until needed.

Once cooled unravel the cake, remove the baking parchment backing and spread jam all over the cake – just the side that isn’t sugared. Place your logs of ice cream and put it on top of the sponge and carefully roll up sealing the ice cream with the sponge. Wrap in cling film tightly and freeze for a good hour at least before slicing and serving!