This delicious lemon sponge cake roll will be your favorite summer recipe this season! Filled with mascarpone and strawberries this cake is so refreshing and inviting!

First strawberries of the season and lemon sponge cake roll to welcome long, sunny days in the countryside. Even though we had a pretty rainy spring, the weather was good for our plants, and we enjoyed our trees transform and bloom beautifully. Our apricot tree was magnificent for weeks, with its pink flowers, along with peaches and plums.

Our strawberries started showing up under their big leaves pretty early, and I was happy as I love how much freshness they give to all our meals. During the strawberry season, we eat strawberries almost every day - with breakfast granola, as a midday snack, in our smoothies, homemade gelato, in cakes, and salads. And not to mention how simple strawberry can make any cake look gorgeous. Don't you agree?

With warmer days and summer in the countryside, I wanted to make a cake that will be simple and refreshing, easy to make but still looking beautiful for those summer parties on the patio.

Cake rolls always seem so hard to make, but they are very simple as all you need to do is bake a flat very thin cake and follow the instructions on how to fold it. No worrying about the height, the shape, or if the cake will decide to collapse. The trick my mother taught me is to roll your cake when it’s still warm (because if you wait too long your cake will cool down and break) and cover it in a humid kitchen cloth (basically you take a clean kitchen cloth and sprinkle it with some water). In this way, your cake will not stick, and it will unroll easily once you have to fill it.

For this recipe, I used a simple recipe for sponge cake and added lemon zest for extra freshness. As I wanted to make this cake very summery and refreshing, I opted for mascarpone filling as it requires a short preparation time, and it goes so well with strawberries. 

Serve with more freshly chopped strawberries on the side and some sweet sparkling wine. Keep in refrigerator for up to 3 days. 

Lemon Sponge Cake Roll
with Mascarpone and Strawberries
Marija Gvozdenovic

INGREDIENTS

Serves 12
Prep.time: 40 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes

For the sponge cake 

5 eggs (separate egg whites from yolks)

5 tbsp sugar

½ tbsp sunflower oil

5 tbsp all-purpose flour

8g baking powder

Zest of half lemon

FOR THE FILLING

250g heavy cream

250g mascarpone cheese

125g powdered sugar

400g fresh strawberries

METHOD

Prepare the sponge cake:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper(parchment should hang over the sides). Place the egg whites in a large bowl and beat on medium/high speed with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Slowly add in sugar, one tablespoon at the time and mix continuously. Continue beating until stiff peaks form. Add egg yolks, one at the time along with a half tablespoon of sunflower oil. Beat on medium speed until combined. Beat the mixture around 3 minutes, until it gets a light yellow color. Add in the zest of half lemon. Sift the flour and baking powder over the egg mixture and fold in until just barely combined.
Spoon the batter into the prepared baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for 13-15 minutes, or until the top of the cake is just golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes.
Cover the cake completely with a clean tea towel. Flip the cake over so that it is on top of the cloth and remove the baking sheet. Carefully peel the parchment paper off of the cake. Starting at the shorter edge of the cake, roll up the cake (along with the towel) and set the rolled cake aside to cool.
Once the cake is cooled, unroll gently.

Prepare the filling:

In the meantime prepare your strawberry mascarpone filling by adding heavy cream to a large bowl and mixing it with a hand mixer until firm. Add in mascarpone cheese and powdered sugar and mix on medium speed until well combined. Add in chopped strawberries and stir with a spoon just until combined.
Spread cake evenly with the strawberry mascarpone filling. Starting at the shorter end, carefully roll up your swirl cake. Place on a serving dish. Pipe the remaining cream on top in swirls, decorate with strawberries, and dust with powdered sugar.
Keep refrigerated until service. Serve in slices with some additional strawberries on the side. Enjoy!