Japanese Roll Cake – Chiffon Sheet Cake

Roll up a sheet of soft and fluffy chiffon cake with some whipped vanilla cream filling. This is how you easily make this super basic but extra delicious vanilla roll cake.

Starting from this basic roll cake, you will be able to make so many different styles and flavors of cake rolls by adding different types of decorations.

Check out my chestnut cream cake recipe for a hint!

Japanese Roll Cake vs Swiss Roll Cake

Japanese roll cake, which we are going to make today, is a fluffy chiffon cake roll filled with whipped cream.

Chiffon roll cakes are mostly popular in Asia countries, where people enjoy desserts with a fluffy (“fuwa fuwa” in Japanese) and moist texture, and a not-too-sweet subtle taste.

Swiss roll is a sponge cake roll with a whipped cream, chocolate ganache, or jelly filling.

Swiss roll cakes usually contain more sugar than Japanese roll cakes. Therefore, whether it’s the cake base or the filling, a Swiss roll cake is going to be sweeter and denser than a Japanese roll cake.

Chiffon Sheet Cake

Chiffon cake, as a type of sponge cake, achieve a fluffy texture by having egg whites beaten separately until stiff and then folded into the yolk-flour batter before baking.

This type of cake is characterized by its soft, moist, airy, and delicate texture. Therefore, you will have to treat the batter gently all the time, and carefully follow the instructions to make a perfect chiffon cake without cracking, deflating, or burning.

There are 3 different methods of preparing the egg yolk mixture: all together method, flour oil method, and hot oil method. I always prefer mixing flour and oil first, then add in rest of the ingredients. Check out my Chiffon Cake Recipe post for more detailed explanations behind these methods.

– Chiffon Sheet Cake vs Chiffon Cake

The recipe of making a chiffon sheet cake is almost the same as making a round chiffon cake.

Besides the different shapes of baking pans (round for chiffon cake, rectangular for chiffon sheet cake), a round chiffon cake has a much higher flour content than a flat chiffon sheet cake.

For example, to make a 7-inch round chiffon cake, we will need 4 eggs, 40 g vegetable oil, 40 g milk, and 68g cake flour…

However, if we are making a a chiffon sheet cake instead, we will need 4 eggs, 40 g vegetable oil, 40 g milk, and only 50g cake flour…

Why?

Since a chiffon cake doesn’t contain any baking powder or baking soda, it is leavened mostly from foam structure of the meringue, which is very fragile. Therefore, to make a round chiffon cake rise higher without deflating, we will need more flour to support its shape.

A chiffon sheet cake doesn’t need to rise as high as a round chiffon cake. And we want it to be as soft and flexible as possible, so that it won’t cracking easily when rolled up. Therefore we should add less flour to a chiffon sheet cake to make it moister and tender.

Why did my roll cake crack?

1. Did you add too much flour?

If you are using your favorite chiffon cake recipe for making a roll cake, remember to reduce the amount of flour by about 25%. See specific reasons in paragraphs above. ↑↑↑

2. Did you over-bake the sheet cake?

When making a round chiffon cake, I usually bake it at 300 °F (150 °C) for about 55 minutes until the surface of the cake turns lightly brown. In this way we can make sure that cake rises slowly but steadily, so that the surface of the cake won’t crack and the center part of the cake will be fully baked.

However, if we bake a sheet cake for such a long time, it will be so dry and more likely to crack when rolled up.

A sheet chiffon cake is much thinner than a regular chiffon cake, so you don’t need to worry about the under-cooked inner part. When the top surface of the sheet cake is light yellow, the whole cake should already be fully baked.

Therefore, you can bake your sheet chiffon cake at a higher temperature for a shorter period of time ( 345°F/175°C) for 20 minutes) to prevent it from drying up. Do not wait until the surface of the cake turns golden brown. Otherwise it will be too dry to be rolled up.

3. Did you wait for too long?

The sheet cake is more tender and elastic when it’s hot. You can roll it up quickly, together with the parchment paper, when it’s still warm, so that it can “remember” this log-like shape as it cools down.

Once the cake roll is cooled to room temperature, you can gently unroll it, peel off the parchment paper, spread the cream filling, then roll it back up easily.

---

How to beat egg whites for Japanese Roll Cake?

To make a regular chiffon cake or sponge cake, you can simply beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

With stiff-peak egg whites, your chiffon cake will for sure be tall, fluffy and tasty, but might grow too fast and have many cracks on the top surface.

However, if the egg whites are not whipped up enough, let’s say you stopped whipping at the soft-peak stage, there isn’t enough air trapped in the egg whites, your chiffon cake won’t capture enough bubbles to be airy and fluffy.

With my hand mixer, which has 6 speed levels, I usually use speed 2 to beat the egg whites for about 8 minutes to get medium peaks.

Time might be varied for different hand mixers, but it’s easy to observe the peaks to tell the stage of your egg whites:

Therefore, I always whip my egg whites until medium peaks form, which is between stiff peaks and soft peaks stage.

• Soft peaks: when you hold your beaters up with the egg white peaks pointing to the ceiling, the soft peaks can barely hold its shape, and will blend down and point to the floor.
• Medium peaks: when you hold your beaters up with the egg white peaks pointing to the ceiling, the medium peaks will slowly bend down and eventually hold its shape at 45 degrees pointing to the floor.
• Stiff peaks: when you hold your beaters up with the egg white peaks pointing to the ceiling, the stiff peaks will hold its shape and point straight up to the ceiling.

---

Some last words before you start:

1. One single drop of egg yolk or oil could stop the egg white from being beaten stiff.

Therefore, no matter how great your egg separating skills are, I still highly recommend using three bowls (two small bowls, one large mixing bowl) to separate egg yolks and whites.

• Carefully open an egg upright over a small bowl, letting the egg white drop to the bowl, keeping the yolk in one of the shell halves.
• Pass the egg yolk between the shell halves until most of the egg white has dropped to the small bowl, transfer the egg yolk to another small bowl.
• Pour the separated egg whites from the small bowl to a large mixing bowl. Repeat with the remaining eggs.

In this way, even if we accidentally break a yolk in the middle of the separating process, we will only “pollute” one egg white, and the other egg whites in the large mixing bowls are still clean and safe.

You can save the egg yolk polluted egg whites for scrambled eggs, but NEVER try to scoop out the egg yolk and keep using the polluted egg white.

2. Line a cake pan with teflon sheet (or parchment paper).

When we make a regular chiffon cake, we don’t line the cake pan with any parchment paper, because the cake needs to “climb up” along the cake pan’s walls in order to rise high.

Since the sheet cake doesn’t need to rise that high for making a roll cake, and we want to unmold the sheet cake without breaking it, it is a good idea to line the baking pan with a piece of teflon sheet or parchment paper.

To line a baking pan with teflon sheet or parchment paper, you can put the baking pan upside down on a sheet of paper, trim the paper if needed (make each edge of the paper about 1 inch wider than the baking pan), then make one cut on each corner of the paper as shown in picture below.

(Omg it’s so hard to describe these cuts in English… Hope this picture makes sense to you. Please leave a comment if you could help me to describe this step in text. Thanks in advance!)

3. How to fix runny whipped cream.

As you could see, my whipped cream was so runny and watery when I spread it over my cake roll. It was kinda messy when I rolled it up.

If it happens to your cake roll too, you can keep it rolled up in the parchment paper and freeze it for 2 hours before slicing. In this way, you won’t make a mess when slicing the cake roll.

Another solution is to stabilize the whipped cream with some gelation.

EQUIPMENT you will need:

• Hand mixer
• Kitchen scale
• Baking Pan (Mine is 10.5×12.8 inch. You can use a square or rectangle baking pan, multiply the length and the width (L X W), the area should be between 121 and 144 in².)
• Teflon sheet / parchment paper

INGREDIENTS  

• 4 large eggs (Each egg weighs about 60g with shell)
• 50 g cake flour  (Can be substituted with 40g all purpose flour + 10g cornstarch)
• 40 g vegetable oil (Or corn oil)
• 40 g milk (I used milk tea instead. You can also use soy milk, coconut milk, almond milk, or even water.)
• ⅔ tsp vanilla extract (optional)
• ⅔ tsp lemon juice (Or white vinegar. Actually optional if you are skillful at whipping egg whites.)
• 60 g sugar

For the filling (optional)

• 200 g heavy whipping cream
• 15 g powdered sugar (it can be substituted with cane sugar)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Step-by-step INSTRUCTIONS 

1. Separate 4 eggs into yolks and whites. Place the egg yolks in a large bowl, set aside on countertop. Place the egg whites in another large mixing bowl, keep in the fridge.

2. Add 50g cake flour and 40g vegetable oil into a small mixing bowl, mix with a whisk until smooth.

3. Pour the cake flour vegetable oil mixture (you just made in last step), 40g milk (I used milk tea), and ⅔ tsp of vanilla extract to the egg yolks, mix with a whisk until smooth. Set aside.

4. Line a square/rectangle baking pan with teflon sheet (or parchment paper). Preheat oven to 340°F (170°C).

5. Take the egg white mixing bowl out from the fridge, add ⅔ tsp of lemon juice (or white vinegar) and 20g sugar into the egg whites. Use medium-low speed (speed 2 out of 6) of a hand mixer to whip the egg whites for 2 minutes until fish eye size bubbles form.

6. Add another 20g sugar into the egg whites, use medium-low speed to whip the egg whites for 2 more minutes until the bubbles are too tiny to be seen.

7. Add the remaining 20g sugar into the egg whites, use medium-low speed to whip the egg whites until medium peak forms (*see the pictures in content above for the differences between “soft peaks” and “medium peaks”.)

8. Scoop ⅓ of the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture, fold until well combined.

9. Transfer the egg yolk mixture to the egg white bowl, gently fold until the color looks even.

10. Pour the batter into the baking pan, gently spread the batter with a spatula to create a smooth surface. 

11. Bake at 345°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

12. Remove the cake pan from the oven, transfer the sheet cake to counter by lifting the four corners of the teflon sheet (or parchment paper). Roll up the hot caken inside the teflon sheet (or parchment paper). Allow the cake roll to cool completely on a wire cooling rack.

13. Use medium high speed of your hand mixers to whip 200g heavy whipping cream with 15g powdered sugar and 1 tsp vanilla extract until stiff peaks form.

14. Unroll the cooled cake, peel off the teflon sheet (or parchment paper). Spread the whipped cream over the cake, leave about ½ inch border around the cake.

15. Roll the cake back up without parchment paper. Keep in the freezer for at least 2 hours before slicing. Optionally decorate the top of the roll cake with whipped cream, chocolate ganache, fruits, or chestnut cream (check out my chestnut cream cake recipe).

To Store

• Tightly roll the cake into a parchment paper, keep it in a food storage bag, seal the bag and store it in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, or in the freezer for up to 30 days (thaw in the refrigerator overnight before serving).

Cake Roll FAQs, Tips & Trouble Shooting:

I have made 5 cake rolls in this week for making this recipe. Hopefully it is detailed and informative enough for you to make a great roll cake.

But please feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions or suggestions. I will make sure to read them and keep updating this trouble shooting section. 

My other dessert recipes you will also like: