Easter Meringue Roulade

Here’s the truth: I love Nigella. It’s not a confession; I say it with pride. I love her confidence, her programmes, her glossiness, her lifestyle, her lavishness. But most of all, I love her food. I’ve bought most of her books, and they are the most-used on my bookshelf.

A few years ago, I made her lemon meringue cake for Easter, adding in the seeds from passionfruit as she suggested. It was good, and I blogged about it in my old blog.

At that time, I thought I would make it again. As it happens, I haven’t – yet. However, I have got into rolled cakes in a big way – swiss rolls and Yule log have both been made in my kitchen recently. I treated myself to a Swiss Roll tin from Lakeland when we were on holiday in the Lake District and have used it several times already.

So for this month’s Forever Nigella blogging event, I chose to adapt the Lemon Meringue Cake into a rolled ‘Roulade.’ This is my first Forever Nigella event, as I am trying to enter some blogging events this month, and this is right up my street with my love of Nigella.

This month’s event is hosted by Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes and the theme is Easter. The passionfruit gives this dessert an Eastertime twist, as originally suggested by Nigella.

Easter Meringue Roulade

Ingredients

• 4 egg whites
• 200g caster sugar
• icing sugar, for dusting
• 175ml double cream
• 200g lemon curd
• 3 passionfruit

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 175C. Grease and line a Swiss Roll tin.
2. In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. 
3. Whisk in the sugar gradually.
4. Pour the whisked egg whites into the Swiss Roll tin and bake for 15 minutes.
5. Remove the meringue from the oven and allow to cool.
6. Mix together the seeds from the passionfruit and the lemon curd in a bowl.
7. Whip the double cream.
8. Spread out a large piece of baking parchment (larger than the meringue) onto a work surface. Sprinkle the baking parchment with icing sugar.
9. Tip the meringue out of the tin onto the baking parchment.
10. Spread the lemon curd mixture onto the meringue. Then spread the whipped cream over the top.
11. Carefully roll the meringue up from the short end – I did it from the long end, but I think it would look better from the short end.
12. Transfer to a serving platter – as you can see, I didn’t really have a big enough serving platter! Don’t worry too much if the lemon curd seeps out a little.
13. Serve fairly quickly.