Out came the Harbour Kitchen Celebrating Lyttelton cook book, on page 87, Italian Ricotta Cake. I was a little bothered by the fact that the entire cake was made in a food processor. (I don't like using food processors and would much prefer using the trusty beater.) But anyway, I decided on this cake and sure enough in the recipe it said to make it the day before so that it can set.
The base of the cake is flour, ground almonds, brown sugar etc and then the centre is made up of Ricotta cheese, cream cheese, slivered almonds and large chunks of chocolate with a good dollop of coruba rum. (hence the name Italian cake, rum gives the taste of a tiramisu)
It went down reasonably well at dinner. In fact, it was hilarious as one mere male asked for an axe to chop into the outside...it was that hard! So to quote the same mere male....'hard case outsides with god-like innards'. I noticed that he was the one and only who managed to eat the crust in the end.
I served this with a dollop of cream on the side (as I seem to serve all my cakes lately!)
I recommend you make this cake if you have the Lyttelton cook book. Maybe be a little more light handed on the pulse button of your food processor when it comes to mixing the crumb base, that will result in the base being softer I think.
Just a little note on last weeks blog about the pumpkin pie. I emailed Kathy in Minnesota and asked her about some of the ingredients and their equivilant here in NZ. Pumpkin comes in a can in the states so we could cook the pumpkin by baking it dry, then mash it keeping it as dry as possible. Nutmeats are a mixture of nuts like walnuts, pecans etc. A stick of butter is 113.4 grams!
So there you go for another week. I am taking suggestions for next weeks creation, would love to hear from you.
Well I must admit I am privileged to have had a piece of Italian Ricotta Cake delivered to me while I was at work today putting together a pallet of Haymaker wine out the back of New World!! It kept eying me - sitting on the pallet and in the car - I could not wait to get home to try it!
ReplyDeleteIt was lovely - tasted very "Italian" and was glad that I had it when I got home and not eaten it in the care or else I might have got done for DIC!!! (Just Joking Cheryl!!)
Was lovely with the chocolate chunks in it and served with cream would have been perfect with it!
Well done Cheryl.