Today I’m telling you the happy ending story of a citrus mascarpone cream in an identity crisis. 😃

Prologue:
The mascarpone,
bought specifically to make a pseudo-tiramisu with panettone,
which after various adventures,
those that had seen the panettone transformed into these panettone and fruit cookies
and that hadn’t seen the mascarpone transformed into the recipe with citrus for Light and Tasty, on that day when I had to pull out the backup recipe…
Uhm, I lost my train of thought.
The mascarpone, I was saying…

Plot:
For years I had the idea of making a mascarpone cream without eggs.
Trying it out,
as I mixed, squeezed the orange, squeezed the lemon, weighed the juice,
in the excitement of the creation,
and all caught up in the consistency of the cream,
and in the creation of the cups with hollowed-out oranges and lemons, something never done before,
and the looming winter afternoon,
and the looming winter nightmare of every food blogger: it’s late, there’s no more light! I can’t photograph anymore!…
in short, I got distracted.
And for my mascarpone cream that I wanted to make without eggs
I used egg white. 🤪
Furthermore, since I didn’t want to use whipped cream,
that is, the most popular ingredient in the web universe for mascarpone creams without eggs,
because in my imagination the mascarpone already contains enough fat of its own, and for this reason, I didn’t want to associate it with cream,
I didn’t have many alternatives, to air it out a bit
and to make it a bit fluffier than that dense and pasty and buttery-like cream that a worked mascarpone without eggs can become,
which I keep among certain not easily edible memories of-grandma-Leda’s production of those days that were… (eh I know, only those who know will smile here! 😎😄)…
Therefore…
after we had eaten our excellent citrus mascarpone cream, which I can’t call mascarpone cream without eggs but only egg white mascarpone cream,
or if you prefer
mascarpone cream without yolk,
I had put the recipe on hold, waiting to find some time to think about how to make, prepare, eat, actually no, photograph first and then eat, and then approve (that is: the family jury said yes), and finally to write, a second version of this mascarpone cream that could be defined as egg-free.
That is a citrus mascarpone cream with aquafaba. 😊

Epilogue:
Read the recipe!!! 😀 You will find both versions! 😉

〰〰〰

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Cheap
Rest time: 3 Hours
Preparation time: 20 Minutes
Portions: 4
Cooking methods: No cooking
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: Autumn, Winter, and Spring

Ingredients

5.3 oz mascarpone
3 tbsp orange juice (juice of half an orange)
1.5 tbsp lemon juice (juice of half a lemon)
2.5 tbsp vanilla powdered sugar
1 egg white
as needed orange zest (from half an orange)
as needed lemon zest (from one lemon)
1.7 tbsp aquafaba (INSTEAD OF EGG WHITE)

Tools

Immersion Blender
Bowl

Preparation

Squeeze half an orange and half a lemon to get the 3+1.5 tablespoons needed.
Pour the orange and lemon juice into a bowl, add the mascarpone and powdered sugar and mix with a spoon.
Beat the egg white until stiff.
Fold the beaten egg white into the mascarpone cream.
Flavor with grated orange and lemon zest to taste.
Chill in the fridge.
As it chills, the cream will become thicker; I left it in the fridge for 3 hours.
This is a soft cream; if you want a thicker cream, you can reduce the amount of juice. But for my personal taste, I preferred to achieve a soft cream, precisely to lighten the mascarpone.
The softness of this citrus mascarpone cream is well represented in the following photo:
I tested it as a cream for panettone (or pandoro), and despite its… relaxed descent from the steep slice… it held its own 😃 It is excellent to pair not only with panettone, pandoro, and colomba but with any baked dessert! 😋
Enjoy!
Everything is the same as the previous instructions; I just replaced the egg white with red bean aquafaba.
It is no longer so difficult (finally!) to find in every supermarket canned legumes without salt, so even those who need to follow a low-sodium diet can now (and I say again, finally!) buy beans or other canned legumes (*) without necessarily having to cook a pot of beans or chickpeas specifically to produce aquafaba.
I proceeded in this simple way:
I blended the preserving water of a can of red beans without salt with an immersion blender until I obtained a foam similar (**) to whipped egg white.
After obtaining the foam, scoop it out with a spoon and add it to the mascarpone cream exactly as for the egg white version.
I used my mascarpone cream with aquafaba to make four mini desserts:
a couple of cookies for each portion soaked in orange-carrot-lemon juice turned out to be just right for this mascarpone cream with orange and lemon with aquafaba.
And no one discovered the aquafaba! 😃
(*) Oh no? you don’t know yet? I cook without added salt, and this blog is a blog of recipes without added salt 😉
(**) Clarification: similar foam, not identical. This is my second ever recipe with aquafaba, so… follow me in my future experiments 😃 and you will be direct witnesses of my future perfect aquafabas! In the meantime, trust me because here this not perfectly whipped aquafaba still made a great impression, the consistency and flavor of the cream was like the one with egg white. So… Enjoy!
😃