I know we’re supposed to be trying to loose the weight we put on during our holiday, but I just can’t go a whole weekend without baking some sort of dessert…

In an attempt to make it not quite as bad as it could be, we’re going for a meringue-based dessert. Soph suggested a roulade… but that sounded rather tricky. However the idea grew on me, especially as I’ll get to use the rhubarb & ginger jam I made a few weeks ago for the filling.

Looking at a recipe for roulade on BBC Good Food it actually doesn’t seem that scary. OK the rolling part could go wrong, but we’d still have a delicious pile of goo :D

For the meringue I’m going to follow the recipe as written, but the filling will of course be the jam, and the cream will be what we’ve got in the fridge, namely non-fat Greek yoghurt and full-fat crème fraîche.

So here we go! Meringue in the tray, sprinkled with almonds.

After 15 minutes in the oven it’s risen, but apparently it will deflate while cooling.

Talking of cooling: it’s cooling in the top oven. Most people would cool under a cloche, but we have problems with that. A certain sweet-toothed cat that will destroy cloches to get at sweet treats.

After cooling & deflating, it’s ready to be turned out.

Jam. Which has set better than the berry jam, but was still rather runny – but that’s perfect for spreading on a delicate meringue.

Cream.

And now the tricky part… rolling it up. Made harder by what was clearly way too much filling.

Excess filling aside… it did roll up into something that looks like a roulade! And it cut easily into far more presentable portions.

MMM Mmm mmm. I approve of the large amounts of ginger I put into the jam!

So yeah – roulade isn’t as scary as you’d think. It’s much easier to roll than cake for swiss rolls, without the pressure of having to do it while it’s hot. Just be careful how much filling you use!