Today I’m sharing with you’re the recipe for this ricotta crumb cake, as part of a Tuscan cooking repertoire, as an unmissable summer cake, and I’ll let you decide when to serve it, if you are in a hurry or armed by adamant patience. I still have to decide if I prefer the cake warm from the oven, or after a few hours of resting in the fridge. Two years ago, I decided to share these recipes, staples of a Tuscan repertoire, analysing the ingredients and the process with plenty of details so that, if you want, you’ll be able to include them into your collection and make Tuscan cooking your signature style.Īfter the crespelle alla fiorentina and the eggplant meatballs, after the ricotta and kale gnudi, after one of the desserts you loved the most, a humble Tuscan apple olive oil cake, and the summer baked eggplants with a breadcrumb topping, after the Tuscan ragù, the stuffed turkey breast, and the Italian potato salad, I want to share with you the recipe for a ricotta crumb cake. A ricotta crumb cake in my cooking repertoire Everyone was impressed when we were making it – it is so easy! – but mostly when, at the end of a meal, we had a fat slice accompanied by an espresso or a little glass of iced limoncello: they always had some room left for a second serving. Since that June dinner in Val d’Orcia, I’ve been making this ricotta crumb cake at least once a week, during cooking classes and when we had friends over for dinner, trying out different combinations of flour, fruit and chocolate. Summer is still here, in the scorching sun, in the smell of dried mint when you walk along a country road, in the hedgerows dotted with ripe blackberries and in the lazy afternoons spent inside, in the windows wide open at night to let an imperceptible breeze in. I had to make it as soon as possible.įast forward a few months, we’re at the end of August. You could cut neat slices, and the chocolate was shining through. The day after, when we took this cake out of the fridge for breakfast, we had a surprise: it was dense, almost like a semifreddo. Easy, foolproof recipe, with endless variations allowed. You don’t have to roll out the dough, just crumble it on the bottom of the pan, press it, and spread with ricotta, then crumble some more dough on top. You rub butter, flour and sugar in fine crumbs, then you add an egg to bind everything together. With this cake, you use the same ingredients, but with different proportions. It was the answer to the problem of making a crostata, a shortcrust cake, in summer, when it is so hot that the butter melts in your hands. Sabrina gave me ingredients and an outline of the procedure to make it. The cake was still warm, the ricotta filling creamy and the chocolate oozing. What was put there, on the middle of the table, was an unpretentious cake, a humble ricotta cake with coarse crumbs on top and some dark chocolate showing up in between.īut it had sometimes alluring that I could not explain.Įven though I was so full I could barely walk, I could not resist a slice of the cake, that was soon after followed by a second wedge. Towards the end of the meal, when we were dizzy from the flowing food and the infinite chats, they made some space on the table, moving aside empty glasses and the remnants of a memorable dinner. We sat there, right in the middle of the most beautiful wheat fields of Val d’Orcia, while a thunderstorm was brewing outside, sharing glimpses of life, of creative work and expectations. It was our first time there, though we felt at home as soon as the first piece of warm focaccia was put on the table and the first glass was filled with crisp, cold wine. Tommaso and I drove to Val d’Orcia to meet Sabrina and Barbara, the two sisters who own Villa Pienza. It was the beginning of June, summer was nothing more than a promise in the air.
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