I decided to make pancakes with the Kidlet this morning. She had hers with bananas, cinnamon, mixed berries, chocolate, and maple syrup, but I wanted something a bit different for mine. I realized that we still had a bit of mascarpone left in the fridge that needed to be used up. And some cream that was coming up on its expiry date. And lemons in the freezer. So I figured I'd look for some sort of lemon-mascarpone topping that I could make to go on the pancakes.

I found a few different recipes. There was one involving lemon curd that looked really nice, but I didn't want to go to the trouble of making curd for this, so I gave that recipe a miss. In the end, I based my topping loosely on a mascarpone "mousse" recipe that I found floating around the internet. I added a bit more sugar, omitted the salt, added some lemon zest, used less cheese (because I only had a little left), and changed up the mixing order a little, but the basic elements were still there.

Lemon-Mascarpone Whipped Cream

Adapted from Stress Baking

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. heavy (35%) cream
• 2 Tbsp. icing sugar, divided
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 100-150g mascarpone
• zest and juice of 1 lemon

Directions

1. Whip the cream with 1 Tbsp. of the sugar and the vanilla.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk the cheese with the lemon zest, lemon juice, and the remaining 1 Tbsp. of sugar.
3. Mix ~1/3 of the whipped cream into the mascarpone.
4. Fold in the remaining whipped cream.
5. Serve on pancakes with fresh blueberries or a blueberry compote.