Lemon Roll

I love the tangy taste that lemon adds to desserts, it cuts the sweetness well. I remembered drooling over a lemon roll that I saw on the Hairy Bikers cooking programme, so I decided to give it a go today as I had quite a few lemons in the fridge which suited me well on this occasion. I didn't have the recipes, which I could have easily obtained from the BBC website if I had wanted to but I decided to do my own. Starting with the cake base, I made a genoise. Unlike other cakes, a genoise doesn't use a leavening agent, its volume comes from the air suspended in the batter during mixing using the bain-marie method. During the week we were learning how to make genoise, "Artisan power!" could be heard in class to spur everyone on, punctuated with a deep breath out whenever someone caught a quick rest in between the whisking.

Once the genoise was baked, I got on with making the lemon butter cream, then the lemon curd (again, more whisking) and finally the lemon syrup to soak the genoise. Finally came the fun part - putting the different components together. The result was a delight! I brought a few slices to a dinner date I had with Anne-Marie and she loved it! We had a nice evening tucked in warmly in her attic apartment, listening to the rain splashing on the windows, knitting and watching Bridget Jones Diary (it was like the 20th time she'd watched this movie!!). When I came home, my editor had tasted my lemon roll. Perfect was his word :)