Ricotta Cheese Tart recipe

Discover in this post how to prepare easily a ricotta cheese tart.

I love to entertain, but between coming home late after weekly courses, feeding my husband and do the houseworks, I haven’t had the time to have friends over much. I do manage to cook for holidays, though, and one of my favorite things is ricotta cheese tart. This version, from my brother in law, is a traditional Easter sweet on both sides of my Italian family.

Why Ricotta cheese? Ricotta is creamy white in appearance, slightly sweet in taste, and contain around 13% fat and for me it is the perfect cheese ever for this type of tart.

Ingredients 6:

sweet shortcrust pastry
ricotta cheese 500 gr.
2 eggs
sugar 100 gr.
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions for baking ricotta cheese tart:

Use half of chilled sweet shortcrust pastry and
Put the other half of pastry in the fridge if you don’t bake this tart for more people.
Using a wooden spoon beat and ricotta cheese, sugar, eggs and vanilla in large bowl to blend.
Now roll out half of chilled pastry to 2 cm, not too thin.
Then grease the baking pan.
Tip: Many recipes for baked goods call for the baking pan or cake pan to be greased and floured prior to adding the batter and baking. This is an important step in the baking process to ensure that the finished product doesn’t stick to the sides of the pan. Even non-stick pans need to be greased and floured for some recipes. By greasing and flouring the pan you’re creating 2 layers of nonstick protection. The greasing agent will allow the flour to adhere to it and as the cake bakes, it will cling to the flour and not to the side of the pan. When baked and cooled the product should release from the pan easily.
Take the measures of the sweet shortcrust pastry, using the baking pan.
Tip: The baking pan must be inverted and placed on the shortcrust pastry to get the measure of the shortcrust pastry that you need for the tart. Now cut following the shape of the baking pan. Remember to leave 2 cm from the edge.
Place round over tart; trim excess dough. Draw the edge, if it is a little bit irregular.
Pour into the pan the mixture of ricotta, eggs, sugar and vanilla essence, previously slammed.
Then, prepare several strips of pastry,1 cm, more subtle than the base of the tart.

Add the strips of pastry,1 cm on the top

Pre-heat oven to180 °C.
Interwoven the strips to get small diamonds.
The photo below gives you an idea how it should look like:

Interwoven the strips on the ricotta cheese tart

At this point, complete the top, press edges of tart to seal. You can help your self using a knife to cut the external part of them. Make them adhere well to the edge, using your fingertips. For a rustic effect on the surface, use a fork.
You don’t need the external parts of the strips, so cut all of the external parts.
You should have a bit pastry left. Add it to the other half one which is stored in the fridge.

Add the pastry left from the preparation of ricotta cheese strips to the other half of the pastry

Bake for 40 minutes.
After 20 minutes, brush the surface with a beaten egg.
Keep baking tart until golden in colour and puffed to the touch, about 20 mins more.
Cool completely, around 1 hour.