Ricotta cheese and strawberries crumble cake, the recipe for a nice spring cake

The ricotta cheese and strawberries crumble cake is a spring dessert, a variation of the Tuscan dessert based on shortcrust pastry. The recipe is prepared with a base of flour, sugar, eggs and butter, and then it is filled with a cream of ricotta cheese, confectioner’s sugar and fresh strawberries.

Instructions

Rinse the fresh strawberries and cut them into equal pieces. Leave them in a bowl with a spoonful of sugar and a spoonful of lemon (1). In a large bowl sift the flour together with the sugar (2). Add the cold butter cut into small pieces and the grated lemon peel (3).

Add the egg (4) and knead with your hands, crumbling the butter with your fingers and mixing it with the other ingredients. Create a slightly coarse sandy mixture (5). In a separate bowl pour the ricotta cheese and start to soften it with confectioner’s sugar. Once you have reached a creamy and homogeneous consistency, add the strawberries and incorporate them with a spatula (6).

Pour half of the shortcrust pastry into a 22 cm mold, pressing lightly with your fingers to evenly cover the entire surface (7). Add the cream of ricotta cheese and strawberries distributing it evenly (8). Cover with the remaining half of shortcrust pastry and bake in preheated oven in static mode at 180° C for about 30 minutes (9).

Preparation tips

The ricotta cheese and strawberries crumble cake is a dessert apparently very simple to prepare but nonetheless it requires some small precautions to obtain a crumbly shortcrust pastry that anyway is good to have a compact dessert at the same time:

Cut the strawberries of equal size to encourage the chewing of the dessert.
Sift the flour to avoid the formation of lumps.
Add the cold butter from the refrigerator to work better, favoring the formation of a sandy mixture.
Cut it into equal pieces to help you make the dough.
Only grate the yellow part of the lemon peel as the white part would give a bitter taste.
Soften the ricotta cheese together with the confectioner’s sugar to obtain a creamy mixture.
Mix the strawberries and leave them to rest in the refrigerator to lightly compact the cream, making it easier to distribute it inside the mold.
Press the shortcrust pastry lightly on the bottom of the mold for a better distribution and to create a firmer base that is also easier to unmold.

Preservation

You can preserve the ricotta cheese and strawberries crumble cake up to 3 days covering it and keeping it at a temperature of about 8-10° C.