Ricotta Cake Goodness

Today was my synagogue's monthly pot luck dinner and service. Since it was the second week in a row of dairy pot lucking (for most of the year our congregation does dairy, the grand exception is the passover seder) Meryl and I opted to bring pizzas, there is only so much meatless lasagne and baked ziti I can eat. Meanwhile I needed to make a dessert.

I had a large amount of ricotta cheese leftover from the last lasagne I made, so a ricotta cake seemed to be in order. After looking through most of my cook books I had to fall back to the Google cookbook, none of my cook books had anything I wanted to try. My search criteria were ricotta cheese (and lots of it) and a minimum of oddball ingredients. The winner was from the Food network's Giada De Laurentiis' show Everyday Italian. The only things I needed to get were amaretto and more strawberries. It is called Ricotta Orange Pound Cake with Strawberries.

I decided to substitute almond extract for the amaretto and bake it in a 9 inch cake pan. Since it was a potluck, I thought it would be better to make a cake instead of a loaf. A cake I could cut into two layers and fill with the strawberries, thus guaranteeing each slice would have the strawberry goodness.

The cake was excellent. It needed to cook much longer that what was stated in the recipe, which had been noted by more than one person in he comments on the site. The strawberries worked out very well as a filling. I considered adding whipped cream, but decided against it. I thought the cake needed to be tasted before adding anything else and I'm still on the fence. I think I will not add whipped cream. The cake is not meant to be all tarted up and fancy, I like the clarity of flavors and I think whipped cream would blunt it.

The cake is definitely a keeper. I forgot to photograph it, so I'll just have to make it again.