Mascarpone blueberry cake
By: Cuisine Fiend
Published: Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - 11:17am

Ingredients




180g mascarpone
2 eggs
100g vegetable oil
100g caster sugar
1 tsp rose water
180g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
250g blueberries, fresh or frozen
pearl sugar to sprinkle (optional)

Preparation

1 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4. 2 Line a loaf tin with parchment or butter and flour it. 3 Beat together the mascarpone, eggs, sugar and oil until smooth, add the rose water. 4 Sift the flour with the baking powder and salt and add it to the mix, beat until well combined and smooth. 5 Fold half the blueberries into the mix, pour it into the tin and scatter the remaining blueberries on top. 6 Sprinkle with pearl sugar, if using. 7 Bake for 50-60 minutes (add 10-15 minutes to the baking time if using frozen blueberries) until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. 8 Cool in the tin for 30 minutes, then remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack.

About

This is quite a simple version of a yoghurt cake with mascarpone replacing the yoghurt. I’ve found that anything goes in cakes, dairy-wise. If your recipe calls for buttermilk, use yoghurt with impunity if you’re clean out of buttermilk. And the other way round naturally, or use a mix - I’ve at times scraped pots clean of whatever I had in the fridge, yoghurt, buttermilk, soured cream and even crème fraiche. It does of course change the taste subtly - but you’d have to have the two cakes side by side and have a forkful of each to be able to precisely describe the differences.
Generally buttermilk gives a lighter crumb. Crème fraiche is rich and has to be diluted with milk, so does soured cream if very thick. Yoghurt is kind of neutral - but beware of the low fat varieties, never ever use them: vile stuff, packed with extra sugar and salt on account of no fat, as everything that carries that pointless label.
Mascarpone works lovely in this recipe; especially with the blueberries in the mix - both things my firm favourite. Frankly, I could have mascarpone and blueberries without the sugar, eggs and all, and without the mixing or baking… but it would be a completely different story.