Tag Archives: ricotta cake

Lemon ricotta and orange marmalade tart

Posted on March 3, 2013 | 9 Comments

Italians love tarts with jam. It must be something about preserving the freshest and sweetest fruit and turning it into something that can be eaten through the year. They also love ricotta, which is wonderfully versatile and can be made into gnocchi, a Christmas zuccotto or baked into a savoury cake. The possibilities are endless. The cake I made on the weekend married ricotta and citrus fruit. It was a very successful marriage.

ricotta lemon and orange tart

I based the recipe on a blog post I found (written in Italian). I used the superb orange marmalade that my sister Barbara made and put it into a sweet pastry case. I then topped it with a layer of creamy lemony ricotta. The sweet soft ricotta is a perfect contrast to the slightly bitter marmalade. Best of all, you don’t need a food processor for this recipe! Everything is made by hand. It is delicious cold from the fridge with a cup of coffee in the afternoon.

Lemon ricotta and orange marmalade tart
Pastry:
325g plain flour
125g unsalted butter (cold from the fridge), cut into thin slices
110g caster sugar
2 egg yolks
1 egg
1 teaspoon cold milk
grated rind of one lemon (using a microplane)
filling
350g ricotta
2 egg whites
60g caster sugar
grated rind of another lemon
300g orange marmalade

Place the flour in a large bowl and scatter the slices of butter. Work the butter into the flour with your fingers quickly until incorporated into a “sandy” mixture. Scatter on the sugar and lemon zest and work in with your fingers. Add the eggs, egg yolks and milk and work the pastry until a ball forms and all the ingredients are incorporated. Flatten into a large disc, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, line a 28cm tart tin with a removable base with foil and set aside. Place the ricotta in a medium sized bowl and add the lemon zest, sugar and egg yolks. Incorporate well with a fork. The mixture will be creamy and thick (and tastes very nice!). Place this in a piping bag with a large nozzle and set aside.

base ready to fill

Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll with a rolling pin until you have a circle that is larger than your cake tin (remembering that the pastry will have to go up the sides of the tin) – I rolled the pastry between two sheets of plastic wrap so it does not stick to the bench and make it easier to lift into the tin. Lift the pastry into the lined tin, pressing down onto the sides and removing the excess. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

making tart

Place the marmalade onto the pastry making sure it is spread evenly. Pipe the ricotta mixture onto the marmalade and flatten it out with the back of a spoon. Place in the fridge for ten minutes (by which time the oven should have reached temperature). Bake for 30 minutes until the pastry is golden. When the tart has cooled completely grate some extra lemon zest and slice to serve.

This tart keeps in the fridge (covered) for around 5 days.

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Zuccotto – panettone and ricotta pudding – those two greedy italians have done it again

Posted on May 13, 2012 | 6 Comments

I just can’t get them out of my head – those two Greedy Italians have won me over. I tried to stop thinking about their passionate love of food and shouts of “fantastic” but I just couldn’t. So I gave in completely to it. I had written about these fellows before but this time it was their zuccotto (which they called a layered ricotta and panettone pudding). I couldn’t stop thinking about it. On the tv show, Gennaro Contaldo starts dancing around when he eats it with cries of “ooooh mmmmm” while Antonio Carluccio looks to the heavens and tucks into it.

The zuccotto originally hails from Firenze (Florence) apparently because it is shaped like the dome of the Duomo (cathedral). It is actually a bit like an English trifle – but without the jelly – and of course it has a hefty dose of alcohol laden panettone. The word panettone comes from the word pane meaning bread. A panettone is a traditional Easter or Christmas cake in Italy and is a bit like a sweet bread. It can be made with or without sultanas and other candied fruit. I remember taking a slice to primary school for play lunch and the Australian children laughing at me. “Ooh it is so dry, why is there no icing?” they would ask. They remarked similar things when I took Italian cheese (like Piave) to school in my sandwiches. I even went through a stage of insisting my father buy Kraft cheese in a box in the mid 1970s so I could be like all the other little Australians. But I digress….back to panettone. Last week I went to the local supermarket Piedimonte and bought the last 3 panettoni they had in the red box (my favourite) so I could make zuccotti for the next few months.

Like Gennaro, I too danced around when I ate it. It is soft, creamy, festive and best of all it is terribly easy to make. It takes a bit of time to assemble but it is almost impossible to go wrong. I improvised with what I had in the pantry – no candied fruit? So I used dried figs. No almonds? So I used hazelnuts. No vinsanto (sweet dessert style wine)? So I used marsala. It still tasted amazing. The only problem is – it takes 6 hours to rest, in the fridge, weighted down, before you can eat it. So you need to plan ahead. It is glorious to eat for a festive occasion with a sweet wine or with a coffee. I ate it for breakfast today. Well it has ricotta in it so surely it is ok as breakfast food?!

Zuccotto*
750 g panettone, cut into slices (1.5 to 2cm thick) – you will have a bit left over
750g firm ricotta
120g icing sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa powder (and some extra for dusting)
50g dark chocolate, grated
50g hazelnuts, chopped
3 large dried figs, chopped
150 ml Marsala
1.5 litre capacity bowl to use as a mould (mine was 16cm diameter)

Line the mould with several layers of overlapping plastic wrap. Make sure a lot hangs over the rim as you will need to fold it over the top of the zuccotto and use it to help you lift it out when it is ready.

Divide your ricotta between 2 bowls and mix half the sugar into each. Use one spoon in each.

The top of the panettone is sliced and placed in the mould

Add the cocoa powder and chopped figs to one bowl of ricotta and add the nuts and grated chocolate to the other. Stir the contents into both so that you have two homogenous but quite different ricotta fillings. Set them aside.

Cut the top off your panettone in a slice. Place it at the bottom of the plastic wrap lined mould so that it covers the base.

Placing the ricotta in the panettone shell

Drizzle some of the Marsala onto the panettone in the mould so that it is reasonably soggy. Now you will need to construct the sides of your zuccotto. Cut more slices of panettone (I cut the panettone in vertical slices for the rest of the recipe).

Drizzle Marsala onto them and place them in the bowl, cutting them if necessary so they fit snugly against each other along the walls of the mould. Now add one of the ricotta mixtures to the prepared mould. Pat it down flat with the back of a spoon.

Unwrapping the zuccotto before removing from mould

Place a round slice of panettone over this so it covers all of the ricotta mixture and drizzle Marsala over it. Spoon on the second ricotta mixture and pat it down. Place the final slice of panettone so that it forms the lid of the zuccotto (this should be just above the level of the rim of the bowl) and drizzle the rest of the Marsala on it. Fold the plastic wrap over the zuccotto. Place a plate over the plastic wrap and weight it down (I used a 1 kg jar of anchovies on top of the plate).

Chill it in the fridge for at least six hours or even overnight. When it is ready, unwrap the top of the zuccotto and try to lift it up with the plastic wrap. Once you are sure that it lifts up, invert it onto a plate. Remove all the wrap and sift some cocoa powder over the top. Now you are ready to present it to family and friends at your celebration – just wait for the cries of “wow” from them!

* adapted from the Two Greedy Italians

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My love affair with cheese. Part 1 – Ricotta

Posted on January 10, 2012 | 2 Comments

There was always a tub of ricotta in the fridge while I was growing up. Papa’ would often have it on bread with some of my mother’s home made jam for breakfast. Ricotta is so versatile that mamma would use it most days in both sweet and savoury dishes. She tells stories of making it during World War II, when they had to leave the tiny town in Veneto in Italy where she grew up to escape the bombing and move to a small remote farm, which was considered a lot safer. With her sisters, she helped to run the farm and this included making butter and ricotta cheese.

My favourite was always her ricotta cake. The creamy centre filled with grappa soaked sultanas and pine nuts fills me with memories of growing up in my italian home. The recipe is my mother’s – she says that she copied recipes from her friends and adapted them to make this version. The secret is in the grappa soaked sultanas. A small jar filled with these is always in my fridge, ready to make a ricotta cake or even to put on some creamy yoghurt for a night-time adult snack. Grappa is distilled from left over grape skins/pulp/stems from wine making. It is a great use of what would otherwise be waste. I remember my father making it – illegally – when I was tiny. I love adding a splash of it in a cup of espresso coffee with some sugar (this is called caffe’ corretto). Of course you can have straight but it is rather potent and best drunk chilled. You can buy grappa from a good liquor store (like Piedimonte’s in Melbourne), or if you are still lucky enough to know someone making it in their backyard…..(let me know!)

Pinenuts, lemon zest and grappa soaked sultanas form part of the ricotta filling

When I asked mamma for the recipe of her ricotta cake, she could not tell me. I had to watch her make it, count the number of handfuls and non-metric tablespoons that went in. She has tasted my metric version of the recipe and agrees it is pretty close to hers! You don’t even need an electric mixer to make it. I find that the hardest part is not eating the ricotta filling before putting it in the cake.

Dolce di Ricotta alla Livia (Livia’s ricotta cake)

Cake: 1 large egg, beaten; 50g butter, melted; 4-5 tablespoons caster sugar (depending on how sweet you like it); zest of 1/3 orange and 1/3 lemon; 3/4 cup self raising flour; 1/4 cup of milk (plus a bit more if needed); 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla essence

Ricotta filling: 450g ricotta; 2-3 tablespoons caster sugar (depending on how sweet you like it); 60g sultanas pre-soaks in grappa (if you don’t have grappa, use brandy or warm water if you don’t want to use alcohol); 30g pine nuts; 1 large egg, beaten; 1 1/2 tablespoons self raising flour; zest 1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line and grease a loaf tin. Mix all ingredients (remember to drain the sultanas) for ricotta filling including a bit of the grappa/brandy they were soaked in if you like. Set aside. Add more flour if it is too runny. It should be fairly firm (see photo above as there is a plate of ricotta filling in the background).

Mix the cake ingredients with a wooden spoon in another bowl. Layer half this mixture in the loaf tin. If it is too difficult to spread, add a bit more milk to achieve the desired consistency. Then layer all of the ricotta mixture on top of this. Smooth with the back of a spoon so that it is flat. Add the other half of the cake mixture as a thin layer over the top. You should have just enough to cover it.

Cook at 180 degrees for 10 minutes then reduce the heat to 160 degrees for 40-45 minutes until golden. Allow to cool in the pan before removing. Serve at room temperature. You can dust the top with icing sugar if you like, it looks prettier that way.

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