Why It Works
- Ricotta adds richness, moisture, and a subtly sweet, milky flavor to the cake.
- Using a combination of cake flour and almond flour reduces the amount of gluten in the cake, creating a uniform crumb while also contributing a pleasant nuttiness.
I asked my three-year-old daughter Hazel what she liked most about Italy after her first visit. Her answer was immediate: “Cake for breakfast.” During our trip to Polignano a Mare, a town in Puglia, our Italian hosts offered us a bevy of cakes every morning. Each was decidedly better than soggy cereal and milk: a chocolate torte dusted with cocoa powder, an apricot-studded almond cake, and my favorite, a moist, lemon-kissed ricotta sponge that I continued to think about long after my return home to Massachusetts, so much so that I sought to recreate it myself.
Breakfast in Italy is typically a simple affair, consisting of a coffee—usually an espresso or cappuccino—with a small sweet treat, be it a cornetto, biscuit, or slice of cake. This is how plenty of Italians start their day each morning, and though some “might confuse it for a deeply rooted, centuries-long tradition,” writes Katie Parla for Eater, it’s a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the 1950’s, breakfast in Italy—at least for the common folk—wasn’t eaten for pleasure; it was merely a way to fill up on calories before a long day of labor. It wasn’t unusual for the meal to consist of leftovers from the night before or ingredients that were about to spoil, like cheese, dairy, or bits of stale bread soaked in milk.
According to Parla, “Italy’s post-war economic boom, coupled with growing urban populations, caused radical shifts in Italy’s food systems and dining customs, including the way Italians procured breakfast.” More Italians began breaking their fast outside the home with a coffee and pastry. Though the biscuit remains an Italian breakfast staple, many also choose to start their day with a slice of cake.
Rustic cakes made with nut meals are popular throughout Italy, with so many versions from region to region, town to town, and household to household that it’d be a life’s work to document them all. Examples include the mandorlaccio, a domed flourless cake made with ground almonds and sweetened with honey; ciambella alla ricotta, a ring-shaped breakfast cake with ricotta; and the torta di nocciole delle Langhe, made from the famed hazelnuts of Piedmont.
This particular recipe goes by the name torta ricotta di mandorle e limone (almond, lemon, and ricotta cake) in Italy, which seems to take many forms based on the recipes I’ve seen for it online. Mine is heavily inspired by the one I enjoyed in Puglia, but isn’t an exact replica since that one didn’t include almonds. The cake isn’t flashy; it has no frosting or filling, just powdered sugar lightly sifted over its golden-brown dome to complement the richness and subtle sweetness of ricotta.
Serious Eats / Maureen Celestine
Perfecting the Lemon Ricotta Cake
Though the hosts brought out the same cake each day (with more and more slices missing each time…), it never seemed to stale. Somehow, it remained moist and tender, and I suspected the ricotta kept it that way. It appeared to be a simple cake. How hard could it be to recreate?
I should have known I was being foolish.
The cake appeared simple, but simple recipes are often the hardest to get right. Unlike an elaborate cake with fondant or buttercream decorations to distract you from its imperfections, a straightforward cake leaves you with nowhere to hide. Needless to say, I ran into some snags.
I started with an almond-free recipe that included all-purpose flour, baking soda, salt, butter, granulated sugar, vanilla, eggs, ricotta, and lemon juice and zest. It tasted pretty good, but its interior was riddled with irregular holes and tunnels. Tunneling can be caused by several things: overmixing the batter and overdeveloping the gluten, an improper ratio of sugar to fat to flour, or ingredients that are at the wrong temperature. (As Stella mentioned in her classic butter cake recipe, eggs that are too cold can curdle a batter, breaking its emulsion and causing tunneling.)
I tweaked and tweaked. I mixed the batter by hand instead of using the stand mixer, I added yolks, used fewer eggs, and even strained the ricotta. Influenced by some of the cakes I’d eaten in Italy, I replaced some of the all-purpose flour with almond flour. Still, the tunnels persisted.
What ultimately fixed the issue was mixing for longer. I was so concerned about developing gluten that I’d been undermixing the batter. The cake didn’t have too much gluten—it had too little. Gluten is a network of protein molecules that provides many baked goods with their structure and chew; work your dough too much, and you may have an unpleasant, rubbery bite. Beat your cake batter too little, and you won’t have enough structure to hold the cake up. The result is a dense bake with a sunken center that won’t rise properly—even with the use of leavening agents like baking powder.
Beating for longer seemed to help ensure the cake was properly emulsified and, though we can’t say for sure this method increased the amount of gluten developed, the batter was a much better consistency and baked into a fluffy, tender cake. Unlike my other batters, which had dry clumps as I folded the ricotta and flour in by hand, this one was smooth and satiny.
There was still a part of me that wanted to reduce the risk of developing too much gluten, which can happen in the minute you turn your back. As mentioned in this Serious Eats primer on gluten, higher protein flours tend to “develop stronger and more complex gluten networks.” All-purpose flour can range from 10 to 12% protein (Gold Medal and Pillsbury are 10-11%; King Arthur is 11.7%), while cake flour usually runs from 7 to 9% protein. Using a combination of cake flour and almond flour minimized the possibility of the cake becoming tough and rubbery, and allowed us to beat the batter enough to ensure it emulsified properly.
Serious Eats / Maureen Celestine
Picking the Right Ricotta
Just as important was the question of what kind of ricotta to use: Unfortunately, a lot of the ricotta sold in the States is very low quality. Because so much of the cake’s flavor comes from ricotta, I recommend using the best you can find. Traditionally, ricotta is made by carefully heating whey leftover from cheesemaking to a precise temperature, usually between 175 and 185ºF (79 and 85ºC). Most mass-produced ricotta, however, is the result of adding acid to whole or skim milk. While it’s possible to get fluffy curds when acidifying milk, there can be a big difference in quality in mass market ricotta, possibly because of additional gums or stabilizers or the standard of milk used. You’ll want to look for sweet, creamy ricotta with soft curds—as Kenji wrote in his ricotta taste test, chalky ricotta is a sign the milk was “too hot or agitated too much during production, causing the proteins to tighten up into rubbery bundles.”
While I love having this cake for breakfast alongside a cappuccino, it’s great any time of day. You won’t find anyone eating it for dessert in Italy, but if you decide to have a slice after dinner… your secret’s safe with me.
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