Prune Roulade with Chocolate and Ricotta

Moving house is enough to make you wish you were a minimalist. Or at least that your partner was one. “Why does he collect historic computers?” you ask yourself, “and what use are all his uni notes about…?” But when he asks about your archive of baking magazines, you suddenly find the minimalistic lifestyle isn’t so attractive after all. And as for the cake tins in every shape and size? “I’ll teach him to appreciate them!” you say to yourself.

The swiss roll tin, truth be told, had never left the cupboard. I’d bought it in a moment or inspiration after reading a recipe for a sticky date roll with butterscotch sauce. Now the pan had to be used before the lure of minimalism lead to a kitchen cleanout.

Creativity combined with the ingredients at hand soon turned dates into prunes, cream into ricotta and butterscotch into chocolate. A new recipe was born. The sticky prune cake was filled with rich chocolate ricotta and drizzled with chocolate sauce. It was decadent, and a perfect distraction from those erring thoughts about minimalism in the kitchen.

Recipe for Prune Roulade with Chocolate and Ricotta

Ingredients for the Cake
160 g prunes (pitted)
3/4 cup boiling water
1 tsp bicarb soda
50 g butter
150 g brown sugar
2 eggs
120 g flour (I used 1/3 chickpea flour and 2/3 commercial gluten free flour blend)

Ingredients for the Chocolate Sauce
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup water

Ingredients for the Filling
250 g ricotta
1/4 cup above chocolate sauce (I didn’t actually measure this)

Method for the Cake
Combine the prunes, boiling water and soda and allow to stand 5 mins.

While they’re standing, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Then grease a swiss roll pan (22 by 32 cm) and sprinkle it with sugar (about 2 tablespoons).

To the prune mixture, add butter and brown sugar, and beat until well combined but leaving some chunks of prune. Add the eggs and flour and beat again.

Pour the mixture into the pan and bake for 15 minutes at 180 degrees Celcius.

Turn out the cake onto a clean tea towel and roll it carefully along the long side. Allow to cool wrapped in the tea towel.

Method for the Chocolate Sauce
Combine the honey, cocoa and water thoroughly in a saucepan, then bring to the boil. Allow to boil for 5 minutes, keeping an eye on it so it doesn’t boil over.

Method for the Filling
Combine the ricotta with about 1/4 cup of the chocolate sauce. It should be ok if the sauce is still warm.

Assembly of the Roulade
Carefully open up the rolled cake and fill it with chocolate ricotta filling. Ask someone to help you at this stage if you need more than two hands. When you have rolled the filled cake back up, drizzle it artistically with chocolate sauce. The leftover chocolate sauce can be used when serving if needed, or eaten with icecream another time.