You know when you look through recipe books and see something that you fancy making. You forget to mark the page, and days later you can’t find it again.
That’s what happened today. Last week, I saw a Cake recipe with a Ricotta Cheese filling. I searched through my books but alas couldn’t find it. So I decided to do my own.
Word or warning. I’ve only just made up this recipe for the filling, so you may need to taste and test for thickness.
Ricotta and Lemon Sponge Cake
Cake Sponge Ingredients Weight 3 Large eggs in their shells. Match the same weight for: Butter – softened Caster Sugar Self Raising flour Zest of 2 Lemons 1 Tablespoon of Lemon Juice Filling ingredients 125 g (4oz) Butter – Softened 250 g (8oz) FULL FAT Cream Cheese (Use straight from the fridge) 250 g tub (8oz)of Ricotta Cheese (Use straight from the fridge) 75 g(2oz) Icing sugar – sifted Zest of 2 Lemons 1 teaspoon Lemon Juice 1 teaspoon of Limoncello Lemon Syrup Juice of 2 of the Lemons 2 x Teaspoons of Caster sugarMethod
Heat the oven to 170 deg fan assisted.
Line 2 x 8 ins Sandwich tins with baking parchment
In a bowl beat together the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy
Gradually add the eggs, (without the shells **) to the butter sugar mixture, adding a little of the flour to help prevent curdling.
Fold in the remaining flour until fully combined.
Then add the Lemon Zest and Lemon Juice.
Divide the mixture into the 2 cake tins. Cover the tins with baking parchment. This helps prevent the cakes from over baking and becoming dry.
Bake in the oven for around 20 mins or until baked. Testing with a skewer until it comes out clean.
When cooked, take out of the oven and leave to cool on a baking tray. In the mean time make the filling.
In a bowl, beat the softened butter until smooth. This must be done first, if not you will get butter lumps in your mixture.
Add the Cream cheese until combined and then the Ricotta cheese and finally the sifted icing sugar until well combined. It may look a little grainy but that is because of the texture of the Ricotta Cheese. If the whole thing is lumpy because you didn’t beat the butter first, put the whole lot, cream cheese and all, through a sieve. It works, I’ve done it.
Add the Lemon Zest, Limoncello and Lemon Juice to the Ricotta mix. Mix until well combined. Place the bowl of mixture into the fridge to cool down again and thicken up.
Make the Lemon Syrup
Place the lemon juice and caster sugar into a pan and simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Leave to cool a little and pour the syrup over the two sponge layers.
When the sponge layers have cooled down completely. Take out the filling from the fridge and layer the cake together using all the filling. Dust the top of the cake with icing sugar and 3 slices of Lemon for decoration.
This cake is light and fresh so will take this amount of filling. I make no apologies for this.
** I recently read in a book that someone made a cake and said it was too crunchy and had to throw it all away. The crunchyness was caused because they used ALL the egg including the shells. !!
- I love Lemons
