plum ricotta and almond cake

plum ricotta and almond cake

• 2 Oct 2022

Sometimes I know in advance what I'm going bake; sometimes inspiration strikes at the last moment. This cake came about because I had a tub of of ricotta perilously close to it's expiry date. I looked through my books, then online for a ricotta cake recipe. 

 

I found a Julia Busuttil Nishimura recipe for a plum, ricotta and almond cake but decided I'd make an apple and blackberry version because it's not plum season here. A quick trip to the fruit shop revealed no blackberries either so I looked through the freezer and found 3 frozen plums I'd put away last plum season and voila I had all the ingredients I needed for this plum, ricotta and almond cake.

As the original cake was quite large and I only had a few plums, I changed the proportions to make a smaller cake. Here's the recipe for you which makes a 17cm cake. If you'd like to make a larger cake refer to the original recipe by Julia Busuttil Nishimura. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup, a 20ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional oven so if you have a fan-forced oven you may need to reduce the temperature by 20°C.

Plum ricotta and almond cake

Ingredients

3 plums
3 tsp raw sugar

75g unsalted butter, softened

110g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp grated lemon rind

2 eggs

75g fresh full-fat ricotta

110g almond meal

50g self-raising flour sifted with a pinch of salt

20g whole natural almonds, roughly chopped

Double cream, to serve

 

Method
Preheat the oven to 180⁰C conventional. Grease, flour and line the base of a round 17cm cake tin with baking paper. Halve the plums, remove the stones and cut each half into slices around 5 mm thick. Sprinkle the plums with 2 tsp of raw sugar and set aside. 

Place the butter, caster sugar, vanilla and lemon rind in a bowl and beat until pale and fluffy using hand beaters or a wooden spoon. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating between each addition. Add in the ricotta and continue to mix. The batter will look a little curdled at this point. Finally gently stir through the almond meal and flour by hand and mix until just combined. Spoon into the prepared tin and smooth the top of the batter. 

Arrange the plums on top of the batter then sprinkle over the remaining raw sugar, avoiding the very edge of the cake as it tends to burn as the cake cooks. Scatter the chopped almonds around the edge of the cake. Place the cake on the centre rack and bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean, when tested.

Allow to cool briefly in the tin, before loosening the cake with a knife and removing the outer ring of the springform pan. Allow the cake to finish cooling on a wire rack then remove the baking paper before serving. Serve with double cream or labne.

So easy to make and so delicious. See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian