Friday, November 7, 2008

Ricotta Pound Cake

The other day, I read a post on Food Gal’s site that sent me straight to the kitchen. She mentioned how we can’t waste food these days, and so she found a couple of excellent uses for left-over ricotta. Wasting food is not just economically ill-advised, it’s an environmental misstep as well. I’m usually pretty anal about planning meals and using everything before it spoils, but once in a while I end up with a bit of something that has no defined purpose. As I hungrily looked at those lovely lemon ricotta muffins, I remembered that I too had some left-over ricotta in the refrigerator. When I started rummaging through the pantry, I found I was lacking lemon and almonds and the frugality of this endeavor would be a bit diminished by a trip to the grocery store. I could have just left them out, but Kurt was in need of a dessert item, a snack cake seemed like a good solution, and so I turned to another recipe which I found online.

Here’s the twist in this story: this is from a book that I don’t own. When Dolce Italiano appeared last year, I read mixed reviews and never acquired a copy. If anyone out there has this book, I’d love to hear what you think of it.

This simple pound cake made good use of my remaining ricotta. It smelled so good when it came out of the oven, we couldn’t resist cutting into it before it had completely cooled. The crunchy, crusty edges were sweet enough as they were without a confectioner’s sugar dusting, and the interior was unbelievably tender. I may cook some apples or pears or cranberries to spoon over pieces of it tonight. The recipe states that the flavor is best the next day, so I can’t wait to find out if it’s even better than it was yesterday.



12 comments:

  1. I love pound cake, you can freeze it for other uses, great post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lisa, I swear, I just looked in my fridge to see if I had any ricotta left to make some sort of desser with it! I have a recipe for pound cake topped with ricotta cheese.
    Do I really need ANOTHER cake in the house?
    I will just look at yours!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Um. yes please! That looks simply wonderful. Sometimes I really wish there were more people here than just R and myself so I could justify a bit more baking!

    ReplyDelete
  4. ohh i love ricotta in cakes. i've never tried it in a pound cake. i have some pomegranates that need to be used - i'll bet it would be lovely as a sauce over ricotta poundcake!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I bet this is absolutely great! Looks so good and moist.

    -DTW
    www.everydaycookin.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is lovely. Exactly the kind of cake I like-- simple, flavourful, a little rustic. If you wanted to be super-frugal, you could start the whole thing with home-made ricotta, which I've recently discovered is very easy to make.

    ReplyDelete
  7. i hate to waste things too, and you'd better believe that if i ever have any ricotta sitting in my fridge, i'll be making this. pound cake is a delectable treat. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. What a fabulous use of leftover ricotta. The pound cake looks so delicious and fluffy =)

    ReplyDelete
  9. I have been maxing out on all things chevre now I see ricotta in my future...

    ReplyDelete
  10. the texture on your bread looks so nice... Saw that post on food gal's site, too :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Did it taste better. I've yet to do a ricotta in any type of baking and I really would like to. I'm not much of a baker though, I'm not good at the precise!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Don't give up on the lemon/ricotta idea. I like to make Ina Garten's Lemon Yogurt cake with ricotta instead. That said, I'm filing this recipe to try soon. Lovely cake, lovely photos.

    ReplyDelete

Blogging tips