Lemon Ricotta Cake

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.

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 was pretty sure the moisture-rich ricotta was key to keeping 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 like this 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. There's a lot going on in even a basic batter like this. The chemistry is complex and could fill chapters, but a succinct rundown is this:

• All-purpose flour is a tempting choice since it's the most versatile, common flour in American kitchens (uh, the name kinda spells that out, doesn't it?). It's a product we can safely assume will be in just about any pantry and not require a special trip to the store. And, with a protein content of about 9-12%, it's sort of the mama bear of flours, sitting comfortably in the middle of the gluten-development zone, which means it can work in a wide range of recipes, from pastries to breads. As you'll read below, I ended up changing this to lower-protein cake flour in the final recipe.
• Butter contributes fat, richness, and flavor, and influences the texture of the cake. It affects texture in two important ways. First, when creamed with sugar, it traps countless miniscule air pockets that will contribute lightness to the cake. Second, butter impedes gluten development by coating the flour's gluten-forming proteins in fat, which reduces their ability to interact and form a strong gluten network. We want some gluten for the cake's structure, but not too much, lest it become tough, chewy, and dense.
• Sugar's contribution of sweetness is the most obvious of its many roles, but by no means is that its only, or even most important, one. Sugar has profound effects on texture and flavor in a variety of ways, including how it binds water to both reduce gluten formation (water is a critical component in the creation of gluten) and retain moisture even after the cake is baked.
• Eggs add richness and moisture, act as an emulsifier to bring the fat and water phases together in the batter, and provide structure by coagulating during baking so that the crumb sets.
• Ricotta, the only ingredient listed thus far that is not standard to just about any batter, is particularly important here. Not only does it add flavor and richness to the cake, but it also helps to thicken the batter without contributing gluten. This means we can use less flour without ending up with an overly thin and watery batter. Because ricotta isn't a standard batter ingredient yet has a big impact on how the cake cooks, it ended up being a wild card in my recipe development.

So, how did my initial cake turn out? 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, especially with an eye toward reducing gluten development. I mixed the batter by hand instead of using the stand mixer, I added more yolks, then 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—another ingredient that reduces gluten formation while thickening the batter (not to mention the wonderful rustic flavor and texture it adds). Still, the tunnels persisted. 

It's difficult to fully pinpoint what ultimately fixed the cake, since the variables are many and they can be hard to tease apart, but if I had to point to one of my many changes, it was that I finally started mixing the batter for longer. I had been so concerned with avoiding the development of gluten that I’d ended up undermixing the batter. By beating the batter much more fully, I was able to ensure the cake was properly emulsified with a much better consistency that baked into a fluffy, tender cake. Unlike my prior batters, which had dry clumps as I folded the ricotta and flour in by hand, this one was smooth and satiny.

Because this more thorough mixing adds to the risk of excessive gluten development, I ended up switching from the more practical all-purpose flour to the safer realm (from a gluten-development perspective) of lower-protein cake flour. Between the cake flour, the almond flour, and the ricotta, I was able to increase my batter-mixing for proper emulsification while minimizing the possibility of the cake becoming tough and rubbery.

With all of those changes, can I say for sure whether the net result was more or less gluten development? Hard to say, but what I do know is I solved the tunneling problem while landing on a cake that was just as light, tender, and moist as I'd wanted.

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 and/or the techniques 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 may not find people eating it for dessert in Italy often, but no one would fault you if you did tuck into a slice as an after-dinner treat.