For the Love of Ricotta!

I was obsessed with Ricotta cheese for a while, and it showed. I swear it was easier to spot it on my body than in my cooking! Who cares! I openly confess— YES! Ricotta, you are sinful, I have sinned, and I cannot have enough of you. Although, I have to declare that I am still in love with Desi Ghee and always will be.

To get back to my obsession with Ricotta, I put it in everything for a while — from banana walnut pancakes with brown sugar,to lemon drop cookies,to pineapple orange cake, to mango souffle! Ricotta imparted a heavenly, light, and fluffy texture to everything it went into… including my thighs. During the Ricotta ages – I also lacked the discipline to click a picture of the deliciousness before digging in. I blame it all on the Ricotta, you can too!

Fluffy and airy banana walnut pancake

So, I have decided to quit cold turkey. No more ricotta in my house now… for sometime :p

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Orange Pineapple cake with Ricotta Cheese based frosting.

A scrumptious cake made from cake mix with a very simple twist!

This cake started of as an experiment but now I will make this my signature cake for sure! It is so heavenly that I can’t get enough of it. In fact, I sat down with a beautiful piece so that I can take a picture and upload it – but temptation triumphed!

The cake mix box says combine 1 cup water, 3 eggs, 1/3 cup vegetable oil and bake at 350 F. Now thats boring! I added three simple ingredients – orange, ricotta cheese and confectioner’s sugar and came up with this delightful and decadent cake.

Here is what I did –

Set the oven to 350 F.

I scraped the orange peel lightly with a grater to get the zest and I used a citrus juicer to extract the juice of the orange.

I then combined 3 eggs, 2/3 cup water, 1/3 cup freshly squeezed orange juice, 1/6 cup ricotta cheese and 1/6 cup vegetable oil with the cake mix. I folded in 1/2 tsp orange zest with the batter.

I baked it in a square pan for about 40 minutes and surprisingly it is very moist – I suspect thats because of the ricotta cheese.

I later whisked together 1 tbsp milk, 2 tbsp ricotta cheese, leftover orange zest, and 1/2 cup or more (make it as sweet as you like) confectioner’s sugar to use as frosting.

Things I used –

1 Orange, 1 packet pineapple cake mix, 3 eggs, half of 1/3 cup vegetable oil (1/6 cup), 1 tbsp milk, 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar, bowl, hand mixer, citrus juicer, grater, and most important- an oven :P.

Try it and let me know if you like it!

Fruitsicle

I have to work very hard to eat fruits. I really have to cajole myself! But, when it comes to buying fruits, its just the opposite… I think ooh they are so good for me I should buy them, once I buy them I will have no choice but to eat’em, so smart, Right?  As you must have guessed, No, that never happens.

So, I end up with a lot of uneaten fruit lying around.. and it stays there until it starts shriveling. Thats when I realize I shouldn’t waste it, I should do something with it.  That ‘something’ just cannot be eating though! Since by the time I come to this realization, its not fresh anymore… doesn’t appeal to me at all. I buy them because they look attractive but I use them out of pity. Shame on me?

In order to save the fruit, I start coming up with ideas of what I can do with it… under the high pressure of making its life fruitful ;). This time around I came up with this :

Adios!

 

White Chocolate Orange Mousse

 What’s needed:

Instant white chocolate pudding mix.

Cool Whip (whipped cream will do too).

Orange.

Milk.

What’s to be done:

Well, if you are lucky enough, you will find this recipe on the back of your pudding mix packet, like I did ;)! But, incase that doesn’t happen you need to whip the whole contents of the packet with 2 cups of cold milk for 2 minutes.

Now beat in 1 1/2 cups of whipped cream.

Fold in 1 teaspoon of Orange Zest! I cannot think about orange zest without smiling :).

Refrigerate for 2 hours and Voila.. You get this:

 

For a healthy version, you can get fat free and sugar free options for the mix, cream and milk.