French Fridays with Dorie: Blueberry-Mascarpone Roulade - And a morning spent blueberry picking

This week`s recipe for the French Fridays with Dorie group is Blueberry-Mascarpone Roulade. At first glance, the recipe seems rather long with a lot of different steps but after the second read, it becomes obvious that this is not a complicated recipe at all but a simple, summery recipe for a cake filled with blueberries and a cream.

Since this is a roulade filled with blueberries, the most important ingredient to get is, of course, the blueberries and what better activity for a summer´s day than to pick blueberries with all the kids involved in the action. So we packed up the car and drove to the one and only blueberry farm that I am aware of. It is about a thirty minute drive and we go there once a year to pick three huge baskets full of delicious, wonderful blueberries.

So this year we went blueberry picking a little earlier than in previous years but with that roulade in mind and all the other lovely blueberry dishes that will make an appearance at our house soon, nobody complained. Even the weather was perfect.

Back home, the roulade was quickly made, I usually bake a strawberry roulade and I do not find it particularly difficult or intimidating to bake this jelly roll style of cake. It was easy to follow the directions in Dorie´s recipe and the cake turned out wonderful and light, just the way we like it. While the cake was cooling, the blueberries had to be dropped in hot sugary syrup to soften and sweeten them ever so slightly. After cake and berries were cool enough, I folded the blueberries into the mascarpone and cream, spread the cream onto the cake, rolled the cake up and put it into the frigde to set for a while. All that was left to do before we devoured the cake, was to dust it with confectioner´s sugar. I then plated it and it was gone in about fifteen minutes.

We all adored this cake, it was wonderful with afternoon tea (I loved Earl Grey tea with this cake). It is just a marvelous cake, not too sweet and very pretty. It was fun reading through Dorie´s recipe and all of the “bonnes idées” and preparing the cake and the end result was just delicious. I followed the recipe to the letter and I would not hesitate to make this again, for a special occasion as well as an every day treat and it was well worth the extra effort of picking fresh blueberries!

Voilà! - Enjoy!