Bolo de rolo

As tradition built it

Bolo de rolo

Makes 1. About 2 hours, then a day before cutting.

Ingredients

The sponge

• 250g sugar
• 250g butter
• 6 eggs, separated
• 250g plain flour, sifted
• a pinch salt
• as needed butter and flour, for the tins

The filling

• ½ tin goiabada, cubed
• 1 glass water
• 120ml sugar

To roll and finish

• as needed sugar, for the cloth and the top

Method

1. Beat the sugar and butter well, then beat in the yolks one at a time.
2. Add the flour and salt and mix gently. Fold in the whites, beaten to snow.
3. Divide the batter into five equal parts and spread each in a shallow tin, well buttered and floured.
4. Bake them one at a time, quickly, in a hot oven, until golden. Let them cool.
5. For the filling, blend the goiabada, water and sugar, then cook it in a pan over a medium heat, stirring all the time, until it is a smooth cream.
6. Turn a layer out onto a cloth dusted with sugar, spread it with goiabada, and roll it quickly with the cloth. Roll each next layer round the last.
7. Set it on a plate and dust it with sugar. Cut it the next day, when it is firmer and will not break.

Notes

Declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of the State of Pernambuco by state law in 2008.

Its origin is genuinely disputed between two named scholars, one tracing it to an adaptation of the Portuguese Colchão de Noiva, the other dating the rolled form to as late as the 1950s and deriving it from Portugal's Azeitão cake.

A popular claim that the cake was served to Dom Pedro II in 1859 looks, on the evidence, like a likely confusion with the separate, better-documented Bolo Souza Leão.

The recipe is from Maria Lectícia Monteiro Cavalcanti's História dos Sabores Pernambucanos, chosen by chef Joca Pontes of Ponte Nova in Recife, with Casa dos Frios, for Revista Menu. It cools the layers before rolling and gives no oven temperature or time.

What a modern chef changes

Precision in the sheet, not the flavour

Rung 03

Ingredients

• green corn
• plum
• lightly sweetened corn purée

Method

1. Use a precise, consistent oven temperature and a consistent, thin, even spread to give a sponge that behaves the same way every time, removing the trial and error that makes this dish something Recife doçarias now teach as a paid, hands-on course.
2. Borrow the documented contemporary Recife variant that swaps in green corn and plum alongside the classic guava.
3. Fill with a lightly sweetened corn purée, textured against the guava rather than replacing it, tying the cake back to this chapter's own corn tradition.