Soft and tender cake filled with lemon curd and rolled into a log makes this Lemon Jelly Roll a beautiful and impressive dessert for your guests this Easter and summer.
For a long time I steered away from trying my hand at a jelly roll. I was intimidated and was afraid of failing and ultimately wasting ingredients. So, for a long time, I remained in awe of the jelly rolls I spotted around the interwebs. They were elegant and gorgeous, BUT they all had one thing in common – all the recipe creators said that it’s easy than you think! When I finally found some courage, I decided to see for myself. And guess what! They were right!
I dreamt up this Lemon Jelly Roll for Easter. It’s purdy, feeds a crowd and when filled with my lemon curd, is pretty darn tasty.
The cake itself is soft and airy, reminiscent of angel food cake. This is accomplished by getting as much air into the recipe as possible. I beat the eggs with the whisk attachment, processed the sugar into fine particles with a blender, and aerated the flour with a blender too. Follow the recipe exactly and you will have the same results.
As far as methodology, the hardest part (for me, anyway) is rolling it up right out of the oven. Rolling while hot is absolutely essential. That’s when the cake is still very soft and pliable. If you wait until the cake has cooled, the cake will crack when you try to roll it.
I tried rolling it with both a silicone mat and greased parchment. Greased parchment works best. With the silicon mat, the golden layer of the cake peels off when you unroll it. Save yourself the heartbreak and just grease some parchment paper, ok?
After letting the rolled cake cool slightly while in the rolled form, the rest is a breeze. Simply unroll, spread on the filling, and roll right back up! Easy right?
Impress all of your guests this Easter and all summer long with this gorgeous Lemon Jelly Roll. You won’t be sorry.
Lemon Jelly Roll
Ingredients
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- ¾ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 3 large eggs room temperature
- 2 large egg whites room temperature
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 ¼ cups Lemon curd or jam in flavor of choice
- Powdered sugar
Instructions
- Move the oven rack to the lowest position and preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a rimmed 13x18-inch baking sheet and line with parchment paper.
- Place sugar in a blender and and blend on high speed until powdery and fine. Empty into a small bowl.
- To the now empty pitcher, add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Blend on high until powdery. Leave covered to let the dust settle.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the eggs and whites on medium speed. Slowly add the fine sugar, followed by the vanilla. Increase the speed to high and whip until pale, slightly thickened, and voluminous.
- Sift flour mixture over the eggs and gently fold just until combined. Transfer batter to the prepared baking sheet and smooth out the top. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, rotating halfway through baking. The cake is done when the edges are golden and the cake springs back when gently pressed with your finger.
- While the cake is baking, grease parchment paper the size of the baking sheet, and place onto the working surface. Once the cake is done, turn over onto the greased parchment paper. Peel off the paper that was baked with the cake and tightly roll the cake with the new parchment paper, beginning from the short end. Let slightly cool, seam side down for 15 to 20 minutes.
- Unroll the cake and fill with lemon curd or jam, leaving a ½-inch rim unfilled. Roll the cake back up without the parchment and let cool completely. Cut off ½-inch from each end and transfer to serving platter.
- Sift on the powdered sugar. Best if served the same day.
Recipe modified from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book
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That looks fluffy and delicious! I want a good slice now
Thank you! Have fun making it and enjoy your slice :)
Yummy yummy. I will like to try it.
I hope you like it :D
so, wouldn’t the processed sugar just b powdered sugar?
You can certainly make powdered sugar by blending granulated sugar, but I’m not sure if 3/4 cup of blended granulated sugar would equate to 3/4 cup powdered sugar. Without having tested it, I imagine 3/4 cup of blended granulated sugar yields less than 3/4 cup powdered sugar. So if you added the same amount of powdered sugar as granulated sugar, it could potentially be sweeter, which isn’t a bad thing :D
This is the best jelly roll recipe and technique I have discovered! Turned out so well…..thank you.
So glad you loved it, Judith!
Hi Patty, Does this freeze well?
I’ve never tried freezing it, but if I were to freeze it, I would wrap it in about 3 layers of plastic wrap and store it in an airtight container before freezing it. If you give it a try, I’d love to know how it turns out :D
Yes, my family makes these and ER freeze them, filled, rollef, and wrappers with parchment paper and aluminum foil.
hi Patty,
Do you grease both sides of the parchment paper?
Thanks.
Lori
I don’t. For the parchment paper lining the baking sheet, I simply place the parchment paper on top of the greased baking sheet. For the parchment paper that’s used to roll the cake, I grease just one side as well. Enjoy!
The cake sticks to the parchment paper though… Is it because I didn’t bake it long enough?
Hi Hannah,
The cake is done when the edges are golden and the cake springs back when gently pressed with your finger. Did you grease the pan before placing the parchment paper on? Did you grease the parchment paper used to roll cake?
Why would you roll it up just to inroll it again?
It’s rolled while still warm because it’s easy to roll at that point and it “tells” the cake to stay in that shape. Once cooled and filled, it’ll be easy to roll it back up because you already “told” the cake what shape to be in. If you waited until the cake cooled before rolling, then it would mostly likely crack when you tried to roll it.
I really like its texture though it had too much of an egg taste, how can I get rid of that? Also, how long was I suppose to blend the egg mixture? I think I might have over mixed it… Thanks you :)
Hi Hannah,
To avoid an egg-y taste, I recommend making sure your eggs are as fresh as possible. In my experience, an egg-y taste becomes more apparent as the egg ages.
Are you referring to step 5? If so, then you’re just going to fold the flour into the eggs until just combined. A few streaks of flour is ok! It’ll get combined when you’re smoothing the batter out on the pan.
Really good, but would use powdered sugar on parchment out of oven.
Although I followed this recipes instructions with the egg whipping technique & flour sifting it was a bit too dense of a cake roll recipe, it felt quite heavy to me. The rolling technique in comparision to other recipes did however work for me & I’m a fan of using parchment paper versus parchment paper & a tea towel to get this going.
I’m glad you found the technique helpful. As for the cake being dense, sometimes over mixing batter is the culprit. If you’re ever inclined to try the recipe again, I’d suggest to gently fold the flour mixture into the whipped eggs and only fold until everything is combined.
Can I use a 17.25×11.5 pan
Yes, you can. Just make sure not to overfill the pan if there’s too much batter leftover.
Yay I made it and I to have been intimated or scared of the Jelly Roll!
You gave good instruction and it is a very yummy recipe!
Mission Accomplished!
Thank you…
That’s wonderful, Cindy! Thank you for the sweet comment :D
Could I use an angel food cake??
You say to whip the eggs until pale, slightly thickened and voluminous… that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Is this when they are foamy or past the foamy stage where it’s becoming a meringue?
On that note I’m looking forward to trying this recipe it looks great 😁
The mixture will turn pale yellow. They won’t really foam or become a meringue because of the yolks. Please reference the second photo in the post for an example. Hope that helps!
Can i make the cake, fill with lemon curd and freeze it before frosting with a cream icing.
While I haven’t tried it, I would not recommend it because I think the lemon curd would lose it’s textural integrity.
I followed this recipe to the letter and the parchment stuck to the cake like glue both in the baking process and the unrolling. I used Crisco. Should I have used baking spray instead?
Either should work.
The cake is excellent, light and fluffy, took about 10 minutes to prepare and the 10-12 minutes to bake. Having the 2 extra egg yolks and not having any curd on hand. I took 1 1/2 cups of water, zest of one lemon, 1/3 cup sugar (we like our lemon custard tart), you could add more, like 1/2 cup sugar and 5 tablespoons of cornstarch, mix well in saucepan. Bring to boil, constantly mixing, beat the two egg yokes, temper with boiling mixture and add tempered egg back into mixture and boil another minute, constantly mixing. Take off heat, add juice of one lemon, 1 tablespoon of butter, and one teaspoon of lemon extract (optional). Unroll your cooked roll, spread evenly and allow to cool for about 5-10 minutes, so when you roll, the filling doesn’t squeeze out of your roll. You may have extra filling being bulldozed towards the end, fill the sides so the sides are filled with lemon filling with a knife or spatula.
Sprinkle with sifted icing sugar and serve!
Thanks for this recipe, Patty!!
Thank you for sharing your recipe! So glad you love the cake :D
I roll all my jelly rolls in a sugar coated clean kitchen towel…never sticks! Love lemon jelly roll.