Two 100th birthdays and a special chocolate roulade

It was an unusual, tiring and mostly wonderful weekend. I'm in the unusual position of having two grandmothers who have both just turned 100 - one on Friday and one today. So it was a weekend of festivities, and it was really lovely to see them both enjoying themselves and celebrating with their families. I ate far too much throughout and probably need to eat super-healthily for several weeks to make up for it!

Today's highlights were both tarts - a super-zesty lemon tart, the punchiest I have had in a long time, and a savoury tart with tomatoes, goats' cheese and a hint of mustard.

On Friday we all ate a three-course lunch and then a huge banquet again in the evening, mostly cooked by my talented sister-in-law. I couldn't choose between her pear tart and her chocolate raspberry roulade in terms of sheer deliciousness, but here is the recipe for chocolate raspberry roulade. It looks amazingly professional but is not as hard as it looks, and it's flourless so it is very light, and gluten-free too.

We didn't even get to the birthday cake (also baked and decorated by Yarti) - at least not on Friday, anyway.

Yarti's chocolate raspberry roulade

Ingredients
175g dark chocolate
2 tbsp water
5 eggs, separated (preferably at room temperature)
175g caster sugar
300ml double cream
200g raspberries
2 tbsp liqueur of your choice (optional) - Grand Marnier works well

Method
Melt the chocolate together with the water in a small pan over a low heat.
Beat the egg yolks and sugar together with an electric whisk until pale and fluffy.
Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry
Fold the melted chocolate into the egg yolk and sugar mixture. Fold in the egg whites with a metal spoon - do this in three batches rather than all at once.
Line a Swiss roll tin with greased baking parchment and pour in the mixture.
Bake at gas mark 5/190C for 20-25 minutes or until the top is glossy and cracked and a toothpick or small skewer inserted inside comes out clean. (It's best to check after 20 minutes.)
Cover with a clean damp tea-towel and leave for at least an hour or until completely cool.
Whip the cream and fold in the raspberries and the liqueur. If you want to decorate the top, reserve a couple of tablespoons of whipped cream and five perfect raspberries for decoration.
Spread the raspberry cream all over the roulade and then roll it up gently from the shorter edge. Treat it gently to avoid cracks, but if it does crack it's not the end of the world.
To decorate, pipe five small rosettes of double cream along the top of the roulade, then place a raspberry on top of each rosette. If you don't have a piping bag, you can just put neat blobs of cream on using teaspoons, though this doesn't look quite as professional.


Unfortunately I didn't get to take a picture of it before it was eaten, but here are pictures of Elsie and Ruth, still going strong at 100, aided by champagne! Cheers both!