• Blog
  • About
  • Recipes
  • Tips & Tools
  • International LOVE
  • Love Notes
  • Shop
  • Powered by MSI Media Group

Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Lemon Ricotta Cake

April 5, 2020 by Mary 4 Comments

Side view of Lemon Ricotta Cake with whipped cream, blueberries and Cape Gooseberries.
Side view as I wanted you to see how moist this cake is!

With the pandemic of Covid-19 in full force, we all need to stay at home and cook great meals, even dessert, with this delicious Lemon Ricotta Cake recipe! This is super simple to make and results in a lovely lemony, super moist, delectable cake.

I first made this Lemon Ricotta Cake when I had bought a bunch of ricotta to make a requested lasagna for one of my kids and then, he was not going to be able to stay for dinner so no lasagna (I wasn’t going to make it just for me) and a large container of ricotta sitting in my refrigerator. What to do? Make a cake for my dear friends, Margaret and Wayne, coming over for dinner two nights later!

You may remember, Margaret is a terrific baker – excellent cook too – but a great baker! She makes these amazing yeast sticky buns around the holidays that I absolutely adore. I get a little frightened of yeast-y things, unless it’s my mom’s homemade Polish bread recipe, which I’ve made a million times. Margaret is unfazed by any dessert or sweet recipe and just does it with aplomb.

For toppings…

Because of this, I supremely value Margaret’s approval on sweets, as she is the expert, and this cake passed with flying colors. I originally served it with ice cream, but I found that to be too cold and masked the natural moistness that is inherent in the cake. The whipped cream, which I used last night to celebrate my son’s birthday (notice the candle holes on top of the cake), along with blueberries and these odd yellow berries called, Cape Gooseberries, was better than ice cream and just delicious!

Easy peasy…

In making this Lemon Ricotta Cake, you don’t even need to pull out the mixer, just make sure the butter is completely softened and you can mix by hand with a spatula.

And it is not only the ricotta that makes it so moist but also the grated apple – an added surprise!!

Make this nice little sweet to end your meal or enjoy with a cup of coffee or tea in the morning.

Happy Sunday everyone – stay safe and stay at home – we can do this!!

  • Lemon Ricotta cake batter in a bowl.
Lemon Ricotta cake batter in the pan ready to go into the oven.


LEMON RICOTTA CAKE – serves 8

9 tbsp unsalted butter, softened, plus more for greasing the cake pan
1 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 cup + 2 Tbs. all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 Tbs. baking powder
Pinch of salt – preferably French grey
1 cup ricotta cheese
Zest of 1.5 lemons
1 medium apple, peeled and grated
Powdered sugar, to dust the top
Blueberries and/or Cape Gooseberries (Optional)
Heavy Whipping Cream – whipped (Optional)

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Grease an 8″ cake pan with some softened butter. Cover the bottom of the pan with parchment paper and butter that as well. Dust all over with flour.

In a large bowl, mix the butter and sugar together using a rubber spatula. When the two are combined and creamy, add in the eggs and mix to combine. You may want to use a whisk at this point.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir everything together until all of the flour mixture is incorporated.

Then add in the ricotta, lemon zest, and grated apple. Again, stir everything to combine – there should be no visible clumps of dry ingredients, but do not overstir.

Scrape the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth out the batter. Bake the cake for 30 – 35 minutes, until the cake is beginning to get golden on top and the edges start to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes before flipping out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Remove the parchment paper. Once the cake has cooled, dust the top with powdered sugar.

Serve with love, whipped heavy cream, fresh blueberries and/or Cape Gooseberries and and enjoy!! 

Lemon Ricotta cake out of the oven, cooling.
Lemon Ricotta cake with powdered sugar and birthday candle holes.

Filed Under: Desserts, Tea time Tagged With: coffee cake, easy desserts, lemon ricotta cake, lemony cake, simple desserts, tea cake

English Provender Caramelized Red Onion Chutney Pork Chops with Apples and Sweet Peppers & Luxury Lemon Curd Chiffon Pie with Strawberries

July 19, 2016 by Mary 8 Comments

English Provender Luxury Lemon Curd and Caramelized Red Onion Chutney.Across the pond, the English Provender Company makes excellent chutneys, jams and spreads. They use only the finest premium ingredients to make each one of the products in their line. That’s why when they approached MARY’s secret ingredients to be in the box, after our testing and trial, we said a resounding “YES!” We’ve got two of their products in the box, which makes it twice as nice!

This caramelized red onion chutney is insanely good and you’ll want to put it on everything as I have been! I have used the chutney to finish off a fresh Bing cherry sauce for duck, it’s terrific as is served on the side of a broiled or grilled steak and it even goes great with scrambled eggs! You can tell I really love this stuff! But then I buckled down and made these Caramelized Red Onion Chutney Pork Chops with Apples and Sweet Peppers that you will LOVE. They are super easy to make, gorgeous to look at and taste out of this world. All good things.
English Provender Caramelized Red Onion Chutney on pork chops on 2 plates with peppers and apples.
Finishing the chops with a squeeze of lime and the sprinkling of chopped parsley adds the right amount of acid and really wakes up everything. I’ve been playing with limes a lot lately. A squeeze of lime is softer than lemon and not so distinct on a dish. It’s nice. Try it!

And then you can serve this super easy dessert to finish your meal that is light, delicious, refreshing, pretty and screams summer. Lemons and strawberries are a wonderful combination. A perfect way to end a meal is with this Luxury Lemon Curd Chiffon Pie with Strawberries. Enjoy!!

ENGLISH PROVENDER CARAMELIZED RED ONION CHUTNEY PORK CHOPS WITH APPLES AND SWEET PEPPERS – serves 2

2  ½” thick heritage pork chops
1 Tbs. unsalted butter
1 Tbs. olive oil
Salt
Pepper, fresh ground
1 Fuji apple, cored and cut into 16 slices
5 small red, yellow or orange small sweet peppers
2 heaping Tbs. of English Provender Caramelized Red Onion Chutney
3 springs of Italian parsley, chopped for garnish
1/4 of a lime in a wedge

Wash and dry your pork chops with paper toweling. Season the top side with salt and fresh ground pepper.

Heat olive oil and butter in a large skillet on medium high heat until foaming mostly subsides. Lay pork chops in, seasoned side down. Add in apples and peppers around the chops and salt and pepper the top side of the chops and sauté for 4 – 5 minutes.
English Provender Caramelized Red Onion Chutney on pork chops in a skillet.
Turn chops and put on 1 heaping Tbs. of English Provender Caramelized Red Onion Chutney on each chop and spread around on the top of the chop. Turn apples and peppers and place them on top of the chops. Sauté for 5 – 6 minutes on this side.

Remove chops carefully to a platter, keeping all the toppings in place. Let rest for 10 minutes.

Squeeze on the lime wedge all over and sprinkle with parsley.

Serve with LOVE and enjoy!!
English Provender Luxury Lemon Curd Chiffon pie - finished pie with strawberries on top.
ENGLISH PROVENDER LUXURY LEMON CURD CHIFFON PIE WITH STRAWBERRIES – serves 6 – 8

10 – 12 oz. heavy cream
4 oz. English Provender Luxury Lemon Curd
1 qt. strawberries, washed, air dried, stems removed and sliced in half
1  9” baked pie shell

Make the pie crust from the recipe here, (or buy a ready made one). Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Bake the pie shell for 8 minutes with parchment paper and dried peas, beans or pie weights in the center to weigh it down. Remove the parchment paper and weights at the 8-minute mark and return the crust to the oven for 4 – 8 minutes more until pastry is light brown, crisp and dry. Let the crust cool completely on a rack before filling.

Whip the heavy cream until nearly stiff peaks form. Gently fold in all of the lemon curd evenly throughout.
English Provender Luxury Lemon Curd Chiffon pie.
Spread the filling in the pie shell and chill for at least 4 hours.

Right before serving, place all the halved strawberries on top of the filling evenly. Cut in wedges to serve. Enjoy!!

Filed Under: Desserts, Dinner, Meat, Products for sale Tagged With: English Provender, lemon curd, pie, pork chops, red onion chutney, simple desserts

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Join 32k+ followers!


Never miss out on a recipe!

Subscribe to receive new posts via email:

Mary Frances

Mary Frances

Spread love through cooking.

Summer Favorites

Easy Cheesy Sautéed Squash The Best Potato Salad Super Quick Chicken and Summer Vegetables Stir-fry Chimichurri-ed Wilted Endives with Walnuts Chilled Curried Zucchini Soup with Apple Garnish Best Strawberry and Rhubarb Crisp to make now!

Categories

  • Appetizers
  • Breakfast
  • Brunch
  • Cocktails
  • Contest
  • Cookies
  • Cookware and tools
  • Desserts
  • Dinner
  • Events
  • First Course
  • Fish
  • Food Responsibility
  • Guest Post
  • Lunch
  • Meat
  • Pasta
  • Poultry
  • Products for sale
  • Salads
  • Sauces
  • Sides
  • Soups
  • Tea time
  • Travel
  • Vegetables

Pages

Blog
About
Recipes
Tips and Tools
International Love
Love Notes
Shop
Mary's secret ingredients

Blogs We Love

  • 1840 Farm
  • A Pug in the Kitchen
  • Cottage Grove House
  • Food, Photography & France
  • Food52
  • From the Bartolini Kitchens
  • Go Bake Yourself
  • Hotly Spiced
  • Jovina Cooks Italian
  • Lavender and Lime
  • Orgasmic Chef
  • Smitten Kitchen
  • Sophie's Foodie Files
  • Steven’s Wine and Food Pairings
  • That Skinny Chick Can Bake
  • The Pioneer Woman
  • The Squishy Monster
  • Tips on Food and Drinks
  • Yummy Chunklet
  • LOVE - the secret ingredient


  • GET IN TOUCH
  • E mary@lovethesecretingredient.com

· All Rights Reserved ·© 2016 Love- the secret ingredient. All rights reserved. Disclaimer | Privacy Policy Disclosure Policy Terms & Conditions