Winter berry and mascarpone sponge cake recipe

Ingredients

• 250 g softened butter
• 250 g castor sugar
• 4 extra large eggs
• 1 vanilla pod, split and deseeded
• 250 g cake flour
• 7 ml baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• 180 ml milk
• 400 g fresh blueberries, dusted with cake flour

• 250 g mascarpone
• 250 g block cream cheese
• 100 g icing sugar, sifted
• 1 orange zest

1. Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Grease and line a 20 cm square cake pan.
To make the Sponge Cake
2. Sift together the dry ingredients. Alternately fold the dry ingredients and milk into the butter mixture. The batter should be of a good stiff dropping consistency. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and evenly spread out with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle over the blueberries, reduce the oven temperature to 160 °C and bake for 40–60 minutes until the cake is golden on top and a metal skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
To make the Icing
3. Gently cream together the mascarpone and cream cheese, being careful not to over mix as the icing can become runny. Fold in the sifted icing sugar and orange zest.
Assembling the Cake
4. Remove the cake from the oven, leave in the pan for 10 minutes and then turn out on a wire rack to cool. Once completely cooled, spread the icing over the top of the cake.