Chocolate Roll, family, doors, and love

January 21, 2018May 31, 2019 by M+N In Construction, Design, Field 1602, Food 6 Comments

Construction check in, like a one-day business trip:  4 am alarm,  6 am Newark flight to Raleigh-Durham, land 7:30, pick up rental car and head off.  House site to consider such things as electrical rough ins: maybe change light locations, add switches, move switches.  Rodney’s office to review cabinet drawings, exercise ourselves over metal roof colors. Stone quarry to choose fireplace stone, dry stack or mortar,  grays or browns, Tennessee or Pennsylvania stone, square or round, irregular, cut, not cut…

Fast, exciting, scary, fraught (some big decisions).  In and out of Chapel Hill in eight hours.  Rapid flight home except for landing in Newark.  Rarely a direct final approach, always circuitous, landed to the west.  Curious, Mike says.  (He says that about many things.)

Most recent trip Tuesday mid-December.  Rodney and I regrouping two days later , snow falling outside,  first school snow day, he asks, “What are you thinking about the doors?” As I hadn’t been thinking about doors at all, he directed me to the TruStile site here  (over 100 door designs with one to nine panels, all of which can be varied in seemingly infinite ways)  and asked for choices.

Yikes. Perhaps replicate the four panel glass design of the living room French Doors?  But a few days later,  carefully rendered designs of four panel wood doors caused my heart to drop. Too busy, too Shaker, too simple: not quite right.   Rodney baffled by the too busy and too simple – needed more guidance.  I needed more time to define a door vision.  Pause for the holidays.

Post Christmas: Deadline for ordering the 22 interior doors (custom made six weeks production in Georgia).  Countless Pinterest and Houzz door pictures, dozens of design books perused, TruStile website studied, a few hours with Rodney on phone, another snow day until we narrowed down to six styles. Customized on the TruCad door design tool to mimic the bottom panel of the front and back door French door sets. Out of all this our doors…

Just the other day found the vision picture, too late to present to Rodney as door inspiration: the door to my cousins’ Paris apartment on Rue du Mont Thabor.  Home base for a few magical days on our 25th anniversary trip to France 2012: a block from the  Tuileries and Champs-Élysées, we walked home past the glittering lights of the 200′ high  Paris Ferris Wheel and gazed out windows like these.

 

 

This is the door of my dreams.  Tall, glossy black, just the right amount of panel trim.  All of our Eco Drive exterior doors and the main interior doors will be glossy black with these Emtek Hampton glass door knobs on satin nickel.  Paris in Chapel Hill.

 

My mothers grandparents were all born in Ireland. She was the youngest of four children raised in Teaneck, NJ.  Mom’s only sister married a debonair Parisian (hence the Paris apartment and french cousins). Their mother always made Chocolate Roll for the holidays.  I once had 23 first cousins on Mom’s side.  This Christmas our family Facebook page reported Chocolate Roll served in Minnesota,  Paris,  St. Louis, and Summit.

Grandma’s Chocolate Roll (updated*)

Makes 12 servings

6 large eggs, separated, at room temperature

6 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened) chopped or broken into small pieces

3 tablespoons water

2/3 cup sugar*

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon Dutch-process unsweetened cocoa powder

For filling

1 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon confectioners sugar, sifted

Garnish: unsweetened cocoa powder and confectioners sugar

Make cake layer:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Oil a 15- by 10- by 1-inch shallow baking pan and line bottom lengthwise with a large piece of wax or parchment paper, letting paper hang over ends by 2 inches.

Melt chocolate with water in a small heavy saucepan over very low heat, stirring. Cool to lukewarm.

Beat yolks, 1/3 cup sugar, and salt in a large bowl with an electric mixer until thick and pale, about 5 minutes in a standing mixer or about 8 minutes with a hand-held mixer. Fold in melted chocolate until blended. Beat whites with cleaned beaters until they just hold soft peaks. Gradually add remaining 1/3 cup sugar and beat until whites just hold stiff peaks. Fold one third of whites into melted-chocolate mixture to lighten, then fold in remaining whites gently but thoroughly.

Spread batter evenly in baking pan and bake 10 minutes in middle of oven, turn oven off and leave in for 5 more minutes.  Transfer pan to a rack. Cover top with clean  tea towel that has been wring out in cold water and let chill completely for at least one hour.  Carefully remove cloth. Loosen edges with a sharp knife.

Sift cocoa powder over top of cake layer and overlap 2 layers of wax paper lengthwise over cake. Place a baking sheet over paper and invert cake onto it, gently peeling off wax paper lining. (Don’t worry if cake layer breaks; it will hold together when rolled.)

Make filling: beat cream with confectioners sugar with cleaned beaters until it just holds stiff peaks.

Fill and roll cake: Spread filling evenly over cake. Put a long platter next to a long side of cake. Using wax paper as an aid, roll up cake jelly roll–style, beginning with a long side. Carefully transfer, seam side down, to platter, using wax paper to help slide cake. (Cake will crack but will still hold together.)

Dust cake generously with cocoa powder and confectioners sugar.