Pear Roulade

It has been so delight this year to have an abundant supply of my own pears. My pear tree is a "twin" tree, with two varieties grafted to a single trunk. One half is William and the other is Conference. The William ripened first and we enjoyed those for a few weeks before the Conference ripened. It was very considerate of the tree to drip feed pears to me in this fashion and I was able to process them at a reasonable rate which meant that hardly any went to waste.

Pears are no where near as verstile as apples but I have enjoyed exploring different ways of using them this year and I have created a number of different desserts with them. I think one of my favourites has got to be the pear roulade that I made as it looked impressive and tasted delicate and luxurious. It had a variety of subtle, sweet flavours and a lovely pillowy soft texture. 

In my version, I used some of the pear caramel I made (see earlier blog post) but maple syrup works well too.

Pear Roulade

4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
50g caster sugar
50g light brown sugar
100g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 ripe pears
1 lemon
250g mascapone
150g double creame
5 tbsp pear caramel (or maple syrup)

Heat the oven to 180°C and oil and line a swiss roll tin. Beat together the eggs, vanilla and sugars with an electric whisk for 5 minutes until thick and doubled in size. Sift in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and pinch of salt and fold in. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 10-15 minutes until springy. Roll up the cake, still in the lining paper whilst still warm and wrap it in a tea towel to hold its shape whilst it cools. In the meantime, peel and chop the pears and coat them in lemon juice then set them to drain in a sieve to remove excess moisture. Beat together the mascapone, cream and 3 tbsp of caramel. Unroll the cake and spread with the remaining caramel, followed by the mascapone mixture and then the pears the carefully roll up again. Sift over icing sugar to finish.