Pistachio and Ricotta Cake – For my birthday and I wanted to make myself a cake that reminds me a lot, the colors and flavors of my land, Sicily.
I chose as ingredients: pistachio as the emblem of Sicily is the only Italian region to produce it, with its unique emerald green and fragrant; ricotta, it is one of the best agri-food products in Sicily, orange as a symbol of the sun, and cocoa cookies that represent the lava of Etna, the highest volcano in Europe that dominates all of Sicily with its majestic and spectacular eruptions.
A pistachio mirror that contains a very soft pistachio mousse and a delicious ricotta cream laid on a crisp black bed of cocoa cookies.
I was inspired by the Pistachio cake by Maurizio Santin (Italian Chef), varying the recipe and inserting other recipes from other famous Italian Chefs like Loris Oss Emer.
Pistachio and Ricotta Cake
Ingredients
Crust
- 350 g cocoa cookies
- 32 g granulated sugar
- 75 g melted butter
Ricotta Cream
- 200 g ricotta
- 60 g powdered sugar
- 200 g whipped cream
Mousse Pistachio
- 135 g pistachio cream
- 315 g granulated sugar
- 330 g whipping cream
- 9 g gelatin sheets
- 6 eggs
Pistachio Glaze
- 108 g water
- 106 g granulated sugar
- 148 g glucose syrup
- 11 g gelatin sheets
- 85 g condensed milk
- 20 g whipping cream
- 20 g pistachio cream
- 143 g white chocolate
Instructions
Crust
- Combine cocoa cookies crumbs with sugar and butter, press onto the bottom of 24cm (9 inches) springform pan, and store in the fridge.
Ricotta Cream
- Sift the ricotta, add the sieved sugar.
- Combine with whipped cream to obtain a soft and silky cream.
- Pour the ricotta cream on the crust and place it into the fridge.
Mousse Pistachio
- Beat egg yolks with sugar for 10 minutes until creamy.
- In the meantime let the gelatine rehydrate in the cold water.
- After it has completely soaked, squeeze it with your hands and make it completely dissolve in a cup with a little bit of warm milk.
- Slowly drip the milk-gelatine mix into the egg cream.
- Add the pistachio cream, while continuing to mix it with a whisk.
- Whip the cream and the egg whites separately and add them to the pistachio cream, stir with gentle movements from the bottom to the top.
- Spread the pistachio mousse over the ricotta cream and put it in the freezer.
Pistachio Glaze
- Soak the gelatine sheets in icy water.
- Melt the white chocolate at 45°C (113°F).
- In a saucepan put water, sugar, and glucose and heat up to 103°C(217.4°F).
- Remove it from the heat, add the condensed milk, the hydrated squeezed gelatin, making sure that it is completely melted, and then the whipping cream.
- Pour over the melted white chocolate together with the pistachio cream and emulsifying everything with an immersion mixer, avoiding the incorporation of air bubbles and filtering.
- Leave it to rest in the fridge for 10-12 hours.
Assembling
- Heat the glaze to 35°C (95°F).
- Remove the frozen cake from the springform pan.
- Glaze the cake, allow it to cool, and decorate with sweetened dried orange slices.
- Wait for the cake to thaw in the fridge before tasting it.
Notes
Reader Interactions
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You state sift the ricotta and sieved sugar? Do you mean strain the ricotta?
Hi Nina,
yes i mean strain the ricotta.
Anna Maria
I didn’t have much luck with this recipe. I am not sure what I did wrong. When the cake was completed, and had been stored in the freezer for 9 hours, the pistachio mousse thawed to the point of melting in the refrigerator while the ricotta cream mixture was still frozen. I was able to pour the glaze with dramatic effect, but when eaten it was somewhat goopy. It was also difficult converting from metric to imperial so I may not have gotten the ingredient measurements right. Also there are a couple of places in the recipe where I may have misinterpreted the directions ex: whipping the cream and egg whites separately as one stage in the pistachio mousse development. I intrepreted this as whipping them together, separately from the other ingredients, then adding them together to the mousse mixture, this might have been a fatal flaw. Also, I had hoped that the mousse and glaze would have more of a pistachio taste.
Hi Jim,
I’m sorry your cake didn’t turn out well
1)For the Mousse Pistachio
The egg yolks and sugar are beaten for 10 minutes, or until creamy.
Meanwhile, let the gelatin rehydrate in cold water.
After it has finished soaking, squeeze it with your hands before completely dissolving it in a cup with some warmed milk.
Pour the milk and gelatin mixture gradually into the egg cream you’ve made by mixing the egg yolks and sugar together.
Then, add the pistachio cream while blending further.
Whip the whipping cream in a bowl
and whip the egg whites in another bowl,
then add them separately to the cream (which is made up of pistachio cream, egg cream, and gelatine) and mix gently from the bottom to the top.
Take the springform with the ricotta out of the refrigerator and top with the pistachio mousse leveling it. put it in the freezer.
2)The glaze
This type of glaze is very particular because it is a concentrate of sugar and if it is poured in large quantities the result as you said is goopy. in fact it has to cover the cake but the excess is gently removed with a spatula, making it go down from the edges
Let the glaze continue to drip for about 10 minutes, then scrape the excess icing off the bottom of the cake using a small offset spatula.
3) to view the right measurements you can click on US Customary in the recipe.
Feel free to ask more if you need.
Thank you
Anna Maria