This log has nothing to do with the winter firewood, this log cake (fatörzs in Hungarian) is a premium version of swiss roll: a simple sponge cake roll filled and covered with an orange flavoured chocolate filling. Sponge cake is very versatile, a base of many Hungarian tortes and desserts.

Piskóta is a light and airy foam cake consisting of egg, flour and sugar. As it has no added fat, it’s not so easy to bake good sponge cake. The traditional piskóta doesn’t contain baking powder or soda because leavening comes entirely from the air trapped in the beaten egg whites. Inspite of that I add baking powder to the batter as I had bad experiences when I wanted to bake sponge cake in the traditional way.

As regards the baking, it’s very important to preheat the oven and bake the sponge cake as soon as it is ready or the egg whites will deflate; opening the oven during the baking process can also cause deflation. It’s your choice if you grease and flour the baking pan or line it with parchment paper; latter is preferable because it makes easier to turn out the dough from the pan.