Sakura Roll Cake Recipe

Celebrate spring with my pretty-in-pink sakura roll cake recipe.

I made a strawberry sakura roll cake recipe seven years ago, at the time using sakura sencha tea to flavour the cake itself. Now that I'm able to buy sakura puree (which I used in my recent sakura ice cream recipe), I can give it even more of an authentic flavour.

I've included links to where I buy my sakura supplies from (none are affiliate links). They ship internationally too, handily.

The sakura puree is already a very deep red that turns pink when diluted, but to achieve an even brighter pink, I added a little additional food colouring. You can choose not to add this colouring in though and just have the natural tone of the sakura puree, which is a bit more reddish.

You can also watch me make this sakura roll cake on my YouTube channel, Tashcakes:

Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients for Roll Cake Sponge:

4 eggs, separated
40g caster sugar
25g sakura puree
A few drops of pink food colouring
40g self-raising flour
30g cornflour

Ingredients for Filling:

300ml double cream, whipped
150g sakura white bean paste

Ingredients for Topping:

150ml double cream, whipped
Edible dried sakura flowers
Sweet sakura crunch flakes

Method:

1. Line a 26 x 36cm baking tray with non-stick greaseproof paper, and very lightly grease it.

2. Preheat the oven to 180°C. In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites until they form stiff white peaks (like a meringue), and whisk half of the sugar in until glossy.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the rest of the sugar, along with the sakura puree and pink food colouring. Whisk in the flours until smooth.

4. Drop a large spoonful of meringue into your egg yolk mixture and fold in to loosen it up. Then add in all of the egg whites and very gently fold together until just combined.

5. Scoop into your baking tray, gently smoothing it out, and bang on the counter a few times to knock out large air bubbles.

6. Bake for about 15 minutes, remove from the oven, and gently run a knife around the edges of the tin to release the cake from it. Then tip it upside-down onto a large cooling rack, keeping the tin on top to keep the moisture in, and leave to cool completely.

7. Once cool, peel off the baking paper, and place the cake onto a large fresh sheet of non-stick baking paper. Place the cake so that you're looking at the 'top' that was exposed to the oven, with the flat side on the bottom. Make a short side of the cake rectangle face you.

8. Trim off about 2cm of both the ends closest and furthest away from you at a slant.

9. Spread on the cream, making it thinner at the end furthest away from you so the cream won't squidge out. If your sakura bean paste is quite solid, roll it into a long sausage shape. If it's too soft to mould, put it in a piping bag and snip the tip off to create a wide hole. Place or pipe the bean paste about a quarter of a way down the length of the cake away from you.

10. Roll the cake up away from you tightly, roll it in the baking paper, and twist the ends tightly like a Christmas cracker. Pop in the fridge cake seam-side-down for at least four hours or overnight to set.

11. To decorate, unwrap the cake, pipe on the cream, and sprinkle and dot on the cherry blossom flowers and flakes before slicing and serving.

Enjoy, and have fun.