Let Them Eat Cake

It occurs to me that all my blog posts have been even more frivolous than usual this week, despite weighty things happening around us. So I am rounding out the week with the recipe for Grandma L’s Italian Cheese Cake:

Italian Cheese Cake

13 eggs (keep 2 whites for frosting)

1 C sugar

2 tsp vanilla

juice 1 lemon

2 oz anisette

pinch salt

1 large container ricotta

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat together first 6 ingredients. Add ricotta and beat well with electric mixer. Pour into greased 9x13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Remove when brown. When cake cools, beat remaining egg whites and spread on cake. Sprinkle with colored candy (multi-color nonpareils). Return to oven and bake until egg whites are light brown.

You can use anise extract in place of the anisette, or substitute almond extract or Amoretta if you don’t like the licorice flavor of anise. If you want a big, fluffy meringue, you can use more egg whites.

I was also going to include the recipe for Anett’s Hungarian Yoghurt Cake, but when I looked for the recipe, all I found was a list of ingredients, with no amounts or procedure. If I can get the recipe from her, I’ll edit the post to include it. In the meantime, I’ll link to another favorite cheesecake recipe, John Folse’s Pumpkin and Praline Cheese Cake.

ETA: I have the yoghurt cake recipe from Anett. It uses European measurements:

Start with a cake layer. You can use a basic gateau recipe or yellow cake baked in a spring form pan.

When it cools, top with fruit of your choice, berries work well.

Add topping:

• Ingredients:
• - 1 packet gelatine
• - 2 dl cream (butterfat)
• - 0,5 dl milk
• - 450g natural yoghurt
• - 4 tablespoon sugar
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• dissolve the gelatin in 0,5 dl milk and heat them together. Whisk the cream and blend the sugar, the gelatine, and the yoghurt  together. Pour over the cake and fruit layers in the spring form pan and chill for 3-4 hours.

You can top the cake with multi-color nonpareils.

• 
  

Bon Appétit!