Let’s cheat on tiramisu for today with this ricotta dessert. But hei this is still an Italian dessert recipe, so it stays in the family.
I haven’t made many ricotta desserts before, I mean where this cheese is the main ingredient and now that I’ve tried this ricotta cake I knew I had been missing out.
For the short crust pastry
250gr flour, sifted
125 butter, cold and diced
Grated zest of one lemon
2 egg yolks
200gr icing sugar
For the filling:
Grated zest of one orange
1/s tsp cinnamon
Grated zest of one lemon
1 kg (yes, THAT much) ricotta cheese
40gr raisins
1 tsp vanilla extract
300gr sugar
Now I remember the reason why I don’t normally make these types of cakes: I hate making short crust pastry! But for this ricotta cake recipe it’s worth the hassle so let’s get this part over with quickly.
Add the flour to a bowl with the butter. Rub them against each other with the tips of your fingers until crumbly, then add the rest of the ingredients and bring them together as quickly as possible (they say that if the butter melts very, very bad things will happen).
Now you should have about 500-600gr short crust pastry. Set aside 100gr and use the rest to line a loose bottomed cake tin (grease it with butter and dust it with flour first), both the bottom and the edges.
Put the tin in the fridge while you prepare the filling for ricotta cake recipe. If you want to work 1Kg of ricotta easily enough, I recommend using a food mixer, where you will put the ricotta, eggs, vanilla extract, orange zest, lemon, cinnamon and sugar. Let it go for a couple of minutes until you get a smooth cream.
Transfer the cream to a pan and bring to boil on a medium heat and let it simmer for a couple of minutes, then take off the stove and add the raisins (previously soaked in water and squeezed).
Now take the tin out of the fridge and get ready for the last part of this italian ricotta cake recipe.
Preheat the oven at 180ºC. Pour the ricotta cream in the pastry shell. With the remaining pastry make about 15 stripes and line them on top. Bake for about 60 minutes. Let it cool completely before serving.
And this the baked ricotta dessert for today (sorry for the small pic I must have messed with it while editing.
