A Billy Miner Bomb

The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.-

I was pretty interested to get going on the Daring Bakers Challenge this month as our summer traveling schedule was going to be making things a little difficult to get everything done.  This one had quite a few steps that required a lot of cooling times in between, so it was not a challenge that you could easily knock off in one day.  After a lot of thought, I decided that the flavour I wanted to theme this months challenge was going to be Billy Miner Pie.  Billy Miner Pie is a 'to die for' dessert served at the Keg Steak house chain here in Canada.  It is a mocha ice cream cake with a chocolate cookie crumb crust dressed in hot fudge sauce and carmel.......and I think with some sliced almonds (if I recall correctly).  In order to keep this flavour theme I found a recipe for mocha ice cream from Allrecipes that I felt would work well for me and altered it only very slightly.  I have never thought to make or even purchased a swiss roll before, so I was quite interested to see how this part of the challenge would play out for me.  I could not bring myself to make two separate batches of ice cream as my ice cream maker makes a gallon of ice cream at a time and we would never eat it quickly enough.  I did not feel confident in my abilities to make the ice cream by hand.  As it turns out....with a 2 L bowl as a mold, I will still have tons of ice cream left over which we can make our way through I'm sure.  I wanted very much to make this dessert to serve for friends visiting from NZ but figured out quite quickly that it would be too much of a rush to accomplish this and dinner with the time constraints involved.  Since I am away...I just had time to snatch a quick photo of the unmolded dessert.   DH will be enjoying the completed challenge with caramel sauce and extra hot fudge sauce.......with the neighbours (I hope).

Over all I loved that this challenge gave me the opportunity to make a swiss roll.  It turned out absolutely light and beautiful and seems like something nice to serve for dessert with a light lunch.  I will have to investigate other flavour options and make some dates for tea now:)  I came very close to making an ice cream cake for Ike's birthday party back in June....and I feel happy now that I didn't since this challenge has given me that opportunity.  If you'd like to give one of these a go.....here is what I did....  When you have time, do have a look over here to see the beautiful results of some other Daring Bakers as well!

The Swiss rolls-
Preparation time- 10 minutes
Baking time- 10-12 minutes
Rolling and cooling time- at least 30 minutes
Filling-5-8 minutes
Filling and rolling- 5-10 minutes
Ingredients-
6 medium sized eggs (or 5 large)
1 C / 225 gms caster sugar /8 oz+ extra for rolling
6 tblsp / 45gms/ a pinch over 1.5 oz of all purpose (plain) flour + 5 tblsp/40gm /a pinch under 1.5 oz of natural unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted together
2 tblsp /30ml / 1 fl oz of boiling water
a little oil for brushing the pans
For the filling-
2C / 500 mls/ 16 fl oz of whipping cream
1 vanilla pod, cut into small pieces of about ½ cm (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
5 tblsp / 70gms/2.5oz of caster sugar
Method-

1. Pre heat the oven at 200 deg C /400 deg F approximately. Brush the baking pans ( 11 inches by 9 inches ) with a little oil and line with greaseproof baking paper. If you have just one pan, bake one cake and then let the pan cool completely before using it for the next cake.
2. In a large mixing bowl, add the eggs and sugar and beat till very thick; when the beaters are lifted, it should leave a trail on the surface for at least 10 seconds.
3. Add the flour mixture, in three batches and fold in gently with a spatula. Fold in the water.
4. Divide the mixture among the two baking pans and spread it out evenly, into the corners of the pans.
5. Place a pan in the centre of the pre heated oven and bake for about 10-12 minutes or till the centre is springy to the touch.
6. Spread a kitchen towel on the counter and sprinkle a little caster sugar over it.
7. Turn the cake on to the towel and peel away the baking paper. Trim any crisp edges.
8. Starting from one of the shorter sides, start to make a roll with the towel going inside. Cool the wrapped roll on a rack, seam side down.
9. Repeat the same for the next cake as well.
10. Grind together the vanilla pieces and sugar in a food processer till nicely mixed together. If you are using vanilla extract, just grind the sugar on its own and then add the sugar and extract to the cream.

The Filling

1. In a large bowl, add the cream and vanilla-sugar mixture and beat till very thick.
2. Divide the cream mixture between the completely cooled cakes.
3. Open the rolls and spread the cream mixture, making sure it does not go right to the edges (a border of ½ an inch should be fine).
4. Roll the cakes up again, this time without the towel. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge till needed, seam side down.

The Hot fudge sauce- I made this just after adding the layer of vanilla ice cream to the cake.
Preparation time-2 minutes
Cooking time-2 minutes
Ingredients-
1 C / 230gms/ 8 oz of caster sugar
3 tblsp / 24gms/1.5 oz of natural unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tblsp /15gms/ 1 oz of cornflour/cornstarch
1 and ½ C /355ml /12 fl oz of water
1 tblsp /14gms/ 1 oz butter
1 tsp/5 ml / .15 fl oz vanilla extract
Method-

1. In a small saucepan, whisk together the sugar, cocoa powder, cornflour and water.
2. Place the pan over heat, and stir constantly, till it begins to thicken and is smooth (for about 2 minutes).
3. Remove from heat and mix in the butter and vanilla. Keep aside to cool .

Mocha Ice Cream Recipe
2 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup flour
3 Tbsp instant coffee granules
dash of salt
3 cups milk
4 eggs beaten
4 cups whipping cream
2 cups milk
3 Tbsp vanilla extract
Combine the first 5 ingredients in a saucepan gradually adding milk and eggs while stirring until smooth.  Cook over medium heat to 160 F or until thickened. (about 15 minutes)  Set custard to cool in fridge.  Once the custard is cold add remaining ingredients and pour into your ice cream maker or freezer.