Matcha Swiss Roll Birthday Cake

Preparation

For the cake:
1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Grease a 13″x9″ rimmed cookie sheet/jelly roll pan, line it with parchment paper and grease it again.
3. In a medium bowl that’s totally free of any grease, beat egg whites until stiff. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, lightly beat the egg yolks. Add sugar and beat until thick and lemon-coloured.
5. Stir water flour, baking powder, matcha and salt into the egg yolks.
6. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.
7. Pour batter into pan, spreading it evenly.
8. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Remove pan from oven.
9. Immediately cut off the crisp outer edges and turn the cake out of the pan onto a large cloth that you’ve lightly covered with powdered sugar.
10. Remove parchment paper.
11.Using the cloth as a guide, roll up the cake starting from the long end (with the cloth inside the roll) and set the log aside to cool.
12. Meanwhile, make whipped cream filling.

For the filling:
1. In a large bowl, beat the cream with the vanilla extract and sugar until stiff.

To serve:
1. When the cake is cool, unroll the cake. Spread whipped cream filling over the top and roll it up again (without the cloth). Transfer to serving dish, placing it seam side down.
2. Slice with a serrated knife.

Swiss rolls are sponge cakes that are rolled in a tea towel when they first come out of the oven. Then they are unrolled and filled with anything from lemon curd, pastry cream, jam, or in this case, whipped cream. There is a tablespoon of matcha in this cake, but if you want to bump up the green tea flavour even more, you can add one or two teaspoons of matcha to the whipped cream as well.