Tarek Malouf - Home Sweet Home

While I was reading Touch of Frost, the main character, Gwen, kept speaking about eating a number of sweet things including pumpkin roll. When this happened, I kept craving something sweet like what Gwen was eating so I decided to make something.

I first looked on the internet but then when I was looking through my many cookbooks, I found a recipe for pumpkin & cream cheese roulade (basically pumpkin roll) in Home Sweet Home which was compiled by Tarek Malouf from The Hummingbird Bakery. When I found the recipe in a book, I decided to review the book based on this recipe, though I have made a couple of other recipes so I will mention them at the end. I'm going to review this book based on how clear the recipes were and how easy it was to follow and the end result.

What I found really difficult, living in Lincolnshire in the middle of nowhere with a select few supermarkets in the surrounding area, is that I couldn't find pumpkin purée anywhere so I had to order a can of pumpkin pie filling (same thing as the purée I discovered) online which was just as easy to go to the shops.

Here is the finished result of the pumpkin roulade, or a slice of it at least.  Just by looking at the finished product and comparing it to the picture in the book, it was exactly the same so it all looked good just on the presentation of the roulade.

The instructions were extremely easy to follow and to execute as they were well written.  For me, it was unusual that the cream cheese filling wasn't spread on the sponge and rolled as soon as the sponge comes out of the oven like swiss rolls I've made before and it was really interesting to roll the roulade up in a tea towel and let it sit for a while; this made rolling the roulade much easier.

My only annoyance about this recipe was the fact the icing sugar spat up and went everywhere because I was using an electric hand mixer.  My advice is to either have a freestanding mixer that has a lid over the bowl or mix the icing sugar and butter by hand just so you don't spread the icing sugar everywhere; just to save on cleaning up.

Once the cleaning up was done and the roulade was rolled, the tasting could begin!  The filling was light and fluffy and the sponge was bouncy and soft; the combination was great.  The flavours in the sponge, pumpkin and cinnamon, works well together and the sweetness from the cream cheese filling heighten the flavours of the sponge.

I highly recommend making this because it's sweet and simple and though the idea of pumpkin in a dessert might be weird here (I thought it was odd), it really works.

I have made other things out of this book as well, such as the Crème Brûlée cupcakes for my mother's birthday and they worked well and tasted like mini crème brûlées but I had to use the grill to do the crunchy sugar bit because I don't have a blowtorch so that made it a bit difficult.  I've also made the coconut macaroons for my sister who really liked them when they were done because they were sweet enough for the sweet fiend that she is.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes to bake as the recipes are tasty with an American twist for a British bakery.

Other Books by Tarek Malouf