A perfect dessert with a truly Italian touch… our favourite! We made ricotta, and then we thought what best we could use it for, and we came up with this. Its a beautiful cake with a slightly smooth and grainy texture at the same time. It is not fluffy like other cakes, but owing to the moist ricotta, this cake has a full-bodied texture and that oh-so-lemony freshness!
This is what you’ll need along with ricotta. To make fresh ricotta click here for the recipe.
To begin, line your cake tin like this. Put two strips in a cross. Then draw the base of the cake tin on a sheet of baking/parchment/butter paper. Cut it out and place it on top of the cross. You can use a springform pan (the cake tin with a loose bottom and a spring clasp at one side), it would be easy to remove the cake from. If you don’t have one of those, then go ahead and do the cross thing.
Take the butter and sugar in a big bowl and cream it for at least 5 minutes. You can use an electric beater, stand mixer or even a whisk. If using a whisk just beat it a bit longer. The mixture will turn lighter in colour, which means it has been aerated. Add the eggs one at a time and beat after each addition. This will ensure your batter is fluffy.
Now, to the egg, butter sugar mixture add the ricotta, lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla essence. Mix well. Now add the flour and baking powder and beat lightly first to ensure the flour doesn’t fly away from the batter. The batter could look grainy but thats perfectly fine. Its due to the texture of ricotta.
Put it in a preheated oven. This is what your batter would look like. Don’t tap it to smoothen out the top. It will even out itself in the oven.
Once baked, it will look somewhat like this. If the colour differs a bit don’t worry. Each oven is different and it could look different due to that.
Don’t invert the cake. This cake has a short crumb and not a spongy crumb because of the cheese, so it will break if you handle it ungently. Lift it out with the help of the two cross strips. This is why we had put those, to aid in taking the cake out from the tin. After putting the cake on a plate, gently slide the strips out. This cake sinks on cooling, so don’t worry.
Dust some icing sugar on top and garnish with mint or flaked almonds or nuts.
Slice it when its cooled.
Dust with icing sugar and serve warm. You can also serve it with some fresh berries or a berry compote. This cake is crusty outside and soft and moist inside.
Recipe: Lemon Ricotta Cake
Ingredients:
250 gm Fresh Ricotta 150 gm All-purpose Flour 150 gm Caster Sugar 100 gm Butter, softened room temperature 2 Eggs, Room temperature 2 tsp Baking Powder Zest of 2 Lemons Juice of 1 Lemon 1 tsp Vanilla Extract or Essence Icing Sugar for Dusting
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line an 8-inch round cake tin with baking paper or parchment paper.
In a bowl beat softened butter and sugar for 5 min. In another bowl sift together flour and baking powder.
Add eggs one at a time beating after each addition. Beat for 3-4 minutes to get a light fluffy batter.
Add ricotta, lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla extract. Beat for a minute. The mixture will look grainy which is fine.
Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed to prevent flour from flying.
Pour the batter in the lined cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for 45-50 mins or till a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Leave the cake to cool for 30 mins and then remove from the cake tin.
Dust with Icing sugar and eat warm.