Torta di Uva Fragola & Ricotta (Ricotta & Concord Grape Cake)
Uva fragola (concord grapes or strawberry grapes)
come and go fast, in September and sometimes they stay until October. I
baked this cake in the middle of October after chancing upon baskets of
uva fragola at the farmers' market.
The producer only asked for 1 Euro for a 500 gram basket! What a
steal! They are not as common as the regular grapes at the markets
where I live but they are more common in Tuscany.
This is my third recipe using these
grapes and the second cake recipe. My favorite among these three is the
Tuscan classic called Schiacciata con Uva e Rosmarino (Grapes & Rosemary). It's a focaccia with the grapes crushed in between two layers of bread dough. Schiacciata means crushed as the bread is aptly named. It is commonly
done in Tuscany and can be found in Florence & Prato mainly.
And the first cake recipe I tried with uva fragola is this Concord Grape Cake. It was good! I chanced upon the recipe by mistake because I thought I had been following a recipe of a schiacciata which the recipe claims to be. But as I looked at the cake from all angles, it was definitely a cake, not a schiacciata.
It's still raining and dreary. The rain
never stopped for a single minute today. As soon as I opened my eyes
this morning, it had been dark, gray, wet and very cold outside.
Perhaps it's a perfect setting for Halloween but it's not really
conducive for anything celebratory. The weather is infectiously gray.
So the kids didn't don their costumes but instead, we had a dinner of
bags and bags of chips and made ourselves drunk with sodas while
watching movies. The kids were jumping everywhere due to too much sugar
and damn bad things we fed them today. Guilty! But this happens only
once a year, doesn't it? The little acrobats are already safely tucked
in their beds. Ssshhh!
Before
you start worrying if I will ever arrive to the cake, here it is. It's
soft, moist and delicious. Concord grapes are really intense in flavor
for that I love using them in cakes. I made two of these, taking one
to a lunch party. The guests loved it. I hope you will too.
Torta di Uva Fragola & Ricotta
Ricotta & Concord Grape Cake
Ingredients:Serves 8 -10
Fits a 26 cm. baking pan (I divided it into two square 16 cm. pans.)
- 250 g. sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 100 g. butter, softened
- 80 g. ricotta
- 150 ml. milk
- 120 ml. extra virgin olive oil
- 1 vanilla pod, seeds removed (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
- zest of 1 lemon, grated
- 400 g. flour (I used 00.)
- 16 g. baking powder
- 600 g. uva fragola, seeded (or muscat grapes)
- pinch of salt
- In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until thick and pale yellow, about 3 minutes.
- Add the butter, ricotta, milk, extra virgin olive oil, vanilla seeds and lemon rind. Mix well.
- Sift in the flour, baking powder & salt. Let it rest for a few minutes.
- Mix in half of the grapes to the mixture.
- Transfer the mixture to a buttered & floured (or lined with parchment paper) baking dish.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven of 180 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes, take the cake out of the oven and distribute the remaining grapes on the top of the cake.
- Bake for 35 to 45 minutes more until the top turns golden brown and the knife or toothpick you insert in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
- Let it cool.
- Garnish with a small bunch of uva fragola & fresh mint leaves on top then sprinkle with icing sugar.
