EASY Gluten Free Artic Roll Recipe
My gluten free Artic Roll recipe is easy, fun to make and seriously tasty. Its dairy free too if you use dairy free ice-cream!
This “Gluten Free Artic Roll” recipe takes me right back to the swim school dinners I had when I was 10. When did you last eat artic roll?!! Let alone a gluten free artic roll! Brings back memories doesn’t it?
I love the simplicity of the ingredients with this recipe – flour, eggs, sugar, jam and ice cream. That really is it.
There’s lots of pics in the instructions to help you but honestly, its much easier than you’d expect. To achieve the perfect, neatest artic roll, I’ve included my 5 top tips in the next section 🙂
Top tips for the perfect Gluten Free Artic Roll
I have LOADS of tips in the recipe itself (all in italics) but these are the most important 5 things to watch out for. All things I have done wrong in the past and causes all sorts of problems!
- DON’T use too much ice-cream!!! I have tried to do this, thinking ‘more ice cream = bigger gluten free artic roll = better’ but that is not the case! If you go over 750ml, the sponge won’t wrap around the ice cream and it’ll just tear and look messy.
- Use good quality baking paper to make it easier to neatly remove the sponge from the tray.
- Set a timer for 5 mins when you’re whisking the sponge ingredients. Any less than this and your sponge will be a little flat, but whisk for 5 mins and you’ll have yourself the lightest, fluffiest sponge.
- DON’T overcook the sponge because it makes the sponge more prone to cracking once its rolled. 11 mins works perfectly for me. If you’re one of those people that takes a cake out of the oven and things “hmm it might need a few more minutes”…. DON’T!!!
- Flip the sponge out from the baking tray, remove the baking paper and roll up as soon as its out of the oven. The longer you leave it, the more chance you have of your sponge cracking.
Gluten Free Artic Roll
2 things you expect you cant eat on a gluten, dairy free diet – a fluffy, seriously light sponge with a creamy ice cream centre. Roll on the summer!!
Servings: 1 gigantic artic roll – probably serves 10
Ingredients
- 4 whole eggs
- 100 grams caster sugar + a few extra tbsp for sprinkling on the outside of the swiss roll
- 100 grams gluten free self raising flour
The Middle
- 100 grams strawberry jam - or any jam/spread you like
- 750 ml ice cream of your choice - I used Swedish Glace Soya Vanilla Soft Scoop
Instructions
Ice Cream
- Make the ice cream centre by placing a large piece of cling film on the work surface and adding a line of scoops of ice cream down the middle>It should be roughly the same length as the short side of the tray you are going to cook your sponge in.
- Use your hands to mush it together into a very rough cylinder.
- Wash your hands so they're not sticky and then wrap the cylinder in the cling film, twisting the ends (like the ends of a string of sausages!)
- Once the ice cream is tightly encased in the cling film, roll back and forward with your hands to get a neater cylinder.>Hasn't got to be perfect! Work quickly because it will be melting!!
- Freeze for at least 1hr until solid.
Sponge
- Preheat the oven to 170oc (fan).
- Line at 23 x 33cm swiss roll tin with baking paper. You can also use a deep baking tray of similar size (needs to be at least 2/3cm deep)
- Crack the eggs into a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar and whisk together until light and fluffy and very thick, >You're looking for the consistency of a McDonald's milkshake! It should expand by about 3-4x, like my picture.>Set a timer! With an electric whisk on full speed, it takes me 5 minutes. Don't whisk for any less!!!
- Add the flour and whisk again for no more than 20 seconds, until just combined. >Make sure you whisk right to the bottom as the flour all sinks there. Pour into the baking tray.
- Bake the sponge for 10-12 mins or until its just starting to brown and if you lightly press the top of the sponge, it gently springs back. >DO NOT overbake. If you think its only just cooked, thats fine!! It'll keep cooking once its out of the oven. If you overcook it, it'll be diffcult to roll up.
- Whilst that's baking, prepare the following:1. Place a sheet of baking paper (a bit bigger than the size of the baking tin) onto your work surface. 2. Place something on the corners to hold it down if it keeps rolling up! 3. Sprinkle over a generous amount of caster sugar all over the baking paper. I use about 3 heaped tbsp – if it doubt, add more! Pic to show you what mine looks like.
- Once the sponge is cooked, remove from the oven and quickly peel off the baking paper stuck to the sides of the cake. Then, quickly flip the sponge onto the sugared baking paper. >The key is to be confident with it! You also need to work as quickly as possible to make sure your sponge rolls up without cracking.
- Loosely roll up from the short side so you have a swiss roll, like this.
- Leave it rolled up to cool COMPLETELY (takes at least 30mins, depending on where it is).>Your cake needs to be cool before you can wrap it around the ice cream for obvious reasons! The reason we roll up the sponge whilst its cooling is because it prevents the cake from cracking at the next stage.
Construction
- Once cool, unroll and spread with loads of jam.
- Unwrap the ice cream and place at one end of the sponge. Use the baking paper to help you roll! >The join may overlap a bit OR not quite meet – don't worry either way!! Don't try to correct that, it'll just get messy and you risk tearing your sponge. Once its frozen, it'll hold together perfectly either way. >Also don't worry about making the ends neat at this stage – we can cut off the messy bits after the next step…
- Place your artic roll in the freezer for at least 30 mins to completely freeze. >If you're nervous about yours falling apart in the freezer, wrap it in cling film. Try not to be too heavy handed when you're doing this as you could squish down that lovely light sponge and mush up the ice cream!
- When you want to eat, remove from the freezer, unwrap, chop of the ends off so its nice and neat and then enjoy!!!
