2nd Christmas Baking Attempt at Home with Kiddo

This Christmas season, since I have been working at my new job more, I am trying to spend more time with my kiddos when I’m home and one of the things my girls love is cooking or more specifically, baking! I made Spritz cookies a few days ago with my youngest and she had a blast using the cookie press. This second bake, Shannon and I decided to make a jelly roll. We found a few yule log and jelly roll recipes we wanted to try, but had all the ingredients for this lemon angel cake jelly roll by yummyhealthyeasy.com

My family can’t get enough of the baking challenge shows (we have several recorded on our DVR ALL. THE. TIME!) Shannon liked the idea of trying a jelly roll since she’s never done one…. so here we go!

Shannon learned a few things as a first timer with the jelly roll:

She needed more powdered sugar on her cloth that she rolled the cake in. Some of the cake peeled off with the cloth as we unrolled it. It was yummy cake, so we didn’t want to loose any of it!

Shannon did a great job rolling the filling into the sponge cake after she realized she can’t roll it tightly because she was loosing all that deliciousness out the ends!

The biggest learning curve was with the filling. It was very lemony and delicious, but it needed to firm up more. I think it was the cooking time; it wasn’t cooked long enough to thicken up! Pretty runny!

Another lesson learned:

DON’T PICK UP THE ROLL FROM THE SIDES! It will crack in the middle especially when your filling is not firm; darn it! I do know I have taught my girls not to lick their fingers while cooking; good thing she was done handling the roll.

So, after spending a fun evening with my girlie, we came to a few conclusions:

Don’t be so stingy with the powdered sugar on the rolling cloth; cook the filling a bit longer so it will thicken up and hold it’s shape; and don’t move it by lifting the roll from the sides!

Overall the flavor was delish and we would for sure try this recipe again, but maybe it’s more spring time. Christmas to me is more about chocolate yule logs with peppermint! I need more Christmas recipe favorites! Please share if you have something amazing that your family looks forward to each year.