A Chocolate Roll & Cheers to 2024 - No. 319

Reflections on quite a year + a celebratory recipe

Photos: Rinne Allen. From Baking in the American South (Harper Celebrate)

Dear readers,

Over Thanksgiving, we were visiting Santa Fe, and between enchiladas topped with red and green chilies (Christmas-style) and knocking back demitasse cups of hot chocolate, we soaked in artist Georgia O’Keefe.

At the back of her museum on the left-hand wall was a display of cookbooks that once lined her kitchen shelf. I knew two—America’s Cook Book and The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. In a personal narrative, O’Keefe mentions how she always wanted to write a cookbook but couldn’t part with her recipes. As in, she couldn’t share them.

I want to write this book on cooking, but I don't really want to give away my good recipes and I really can't - because no one can really give away the quality of their own touch. - Georgia O’Keefe

As someone who has written about food all my life, this struck me as odd. Isn’t it at the very core of an artist to share? Famous painters and photographers, even amateurs on Instagram, put their talents out there for us to see.

But I wonder if O’Keefe made this statement more as a visionary than selfish artist. Did she silently know that once you share something, it is gone forever? It is out there.

No doubt, O’Keefe, the mother of modernism, whose signature paintings of vivid, magnified flowers became bright childlike circles on canvas as she aged, knew loss. She developed macular degeneration.

This day before many celebrate the joy of Christmas and Hannukah, I’d like to reflect on 2024, and share something personal as well as a chocolate roll recipe and story.

My year began with a January cancer diagnosis, followed by treatment, recovery, then book tour.

In April, my spring garden was a challenge to put in because I didn’t have the strength, so my husband did the digging and lifting. And when those tomatoes came in around mid-July—and boy, did they ever come in—they lifted me up. I had never grown fat Brandywines and fell in love again with my old faithful Cherokee Purples. I froze what I could for soup, made salsa, ate sandwiches on soft bread, but mostly gave away the tomatoes.

In the beginning of my health scare I spent a frightening amount of time thinking about health, my family, how I wasn’t ready to leave this world, and about my upcoming tour. I wondered as my hair began falling out if I’d need a wig come fall. As August arrived and my strength returned, and most of my hair miraculously stayed in place, I was consumed with the tour’s logistics and doing advance magazine and radio interviews. I agreed to the fall bookstore events out of faith, feeling somehow I’d get to Memphis and then Jackson and then New Orleans and then up thorough Alabama and back home.

B-12 shots, a Covid vaccine in one arm and a flu vax in the other, a tune-up on the car, cookies and cakes baked ahead and stashed in the freezer, a few new dresses—this was just a bit of the prep for the launch of Baking in the American South on Labor Day. To get this book out in the universe in bookstores and kitchens and let people taste the recipes I had tested for nearly three years and hear the stories behind them was beyond meaningful. Even more so was explaining this complicated region in which I live and a place I dearly love, and all through recipes.

While life now has gone back to ‘’normal,’’ the way I look at the world (and maybe those of you who have been through health struggles can relate…) is more clear than ever. I am torn up about the deep divisions in America. But what I think and say has no effect whatsoever on Washington D.C. or even our Tennessee state government. Yet, I can care for others and improve the community in which I live, and if others do the same, perhaps a mix of love and common sense will right the chaotic ship in 2025.

And let me remind you that as a mother and grandmother, I support an American assault rifle ban so children can grow to adulthood without the number one threat to their safety—gun violence. I’ve been outspoken about this since the Covenant School shooting nearly two years ago in Nashville, and I’m not going to stop post cancer. I believe women are key in getting this legislation passed and should not stay silent.

A recipe I became fascinated with while researching my new book is the chocolate roll. It’s a simpler cousin of the French masterpiece of a holiday dessert, the Christmas log called buche de Noel.

Our American version no doubt came from European recipes and is an example of a dessert that’s gone through changes over the centuries. It evolved from the thrifty, homespun jellyroll you create from what’s on hand.

The chocolate roll is flourless and for that reason many believe this cake might have been an early Jewish Passover cake in America. This particular recipe came from the family cookbook of Sophie Meldrim Shonnard of Savannah, Georgia, who was born in 1888, and who died and was buried in Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery in 1980. She was a famous fashion designer in New York City, and Jackie Kennedy wore her hand-sewn pink boucle suit and pillbox hat on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas when her husband, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated.

It seemed appropriate that a clever woman with an eye for Chanel would include a chocolate roll in her cookbook.

The beauty of this recipe is that your own touch provides the glamour. For example, my mom would serve a homemade chocolate sauce alongside. My mother-in-law might insist we pipe a few meringue mushrooms. And she’d drag some lines through the glaze and dust it all with cocoa, so it looked like a fallen log in the woods.

In a hurried moment, with a house full of people ready to eat, I might reach for a heavy chef’s knife and cut shavings off the end of peppermint chocolate bark, then scatter those over the top and call it a day.

Georgia O’Keefe was right about personal touch. We all have something to give to chocolate rolls and to this world. She did not let visual limitations slow her down one bit. And my physical limitations this year have only made me stronger.

This Christmas, chocolate roll reminds me that out of darkness, there is light.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, best wishes for a safe and healthy New Year. See you in 2025!

- xo, Anne

Next week: For everyone, Hoppin John for New Year’s cooked the Gullah way.

THE RECIPE:

Mrs. Pritchard’s Chocolate Roll

This roll is filled with sweetened whipped cream, and the glaze is optional. I’ve added a faint taste of coffee, but the flavoring is all up to you. Chances are you have everything needed to make this roll right in house. And think from the photo that it’s a heavy dessert. Without the flour, it is light as air.

Serves 8

Prep: 45 to 50 minutes

Bake: 20 to 25 minutes

• Waxed or parchment paper, for lining the pan

• 5 large eggs, at room temperature

• 1 cup (108 grams) sifted confectioners’ sugar, plus more for dusting the kitchen towel

• 1/4 cup (25 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Pinch of salt

• Whipped Cream Filling:

• 1 cup heavy whipping cream

• 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar, or to taste

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Mocha Glaze, if desired:

• 2 cups (216 grams) sifted confectioners’ sugar, plus more for dusting, if desired

• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, plus more for dusting, if desired

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 3 to 4 tablespoons strong coffee

1. Heat the oven to 350º F, with a rack in the middle. Line a 10- by 15-inch jellyroll pan with waxed or parchment paper and set aside.

2. Separate the eggs, placing the whites in one large bowl and the yolks in another large bowl. Add the sugar to the yolks, and beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until lightened in color, the shade of butter, and nearly doubled in volume, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the cocoa and vanilla, and beat on low until just combined.

3. Add the salt to the egg whites and with clean beaters, whip them on high speed until stiff peaks, 3 minutes. Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk and chocolate mixture with a rubber spatula until just combined. It’s fine if a few flecks of egg white still remain. Turn into the prepared pan, and smooth the top. Bake until the cake springs back in the center, 20 to 25 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, dust a light kitchen towel with a little confectioners’ sugar. The cake will land on this sugar. When the cake is done, run a paring knife around the edges, and turn it out onto the sugar. Carefully, because the cake is hot, peel off the wax or parchment paper. Place a damp kitchen towel or damp paper towels on top of the cake. Let the cake cool, about 20 minutes.

5. For the whipped cream filling, chill a large bowl and mixer beaters in the freezer for a few minutes while you measure the ingredients. Pour the cream into the chilled bowl and beat on high speed until it thickens, 1 1/2 minutes. Stop the machine and add the sugar and vanilla. Beat on high until stiff peaks form, 1 to 2 minutes more.

6. For the mocha glaze, place the sugar and cocoa in a medium bowl, and whisk to combine. Pour in the vanilla and 3 tablespoons of the coffee, adding more coffee as needed for a smooth spreadable glaze.

7. Remove the damp towels, and spread the filling smoothly over the top of the roll. Starting with the long side nearest you, roll up the cake, working carefully so it does not crack. (But even if it does, you are pouring glaze over the top!) Carefully transfer the cake to a serving platter, seam-side down. Spread the glaze over the top or simply dust with cocoa or confectioners’ sugar, if desired. Slice and serve, or chill in the refrigerator for up to 4 hours before it’s time to serve.