Ricotta Gnocchi

Ready, steady, go! Dinner on the table in less than half an hour with those ricotta gnocchis.  All you will need is ricotta, a bit of flour and some parmesan or similar cheese.  The method is super easy and you can also get help from others, children included. The recipe is fun.  In this recipe, I serve them with roasted vegetables.  The recipe is inspired from one found on Delicious.

This quantity serves easily 4 people (you could extend it to five).

Ingredients:

For the roasted vegetables:

Tip: here you need to adapt to what you have in your fridge, so don’t hesitate to swap around. 

  • 1 or 2 capsicums
  • 1 onion (red or brown)
  • 2 tomatoes cut in quarters or one punnet of cherry tomatoes
  • 1/3 aubergine (eggplant) cut in cubes
  • 2 tablespoons of olive oil
  • 6 garlic cloves unwrapped

For the gnocchi:

  • 500 g of firm ricotta
  • 50 g of grated parmesan (or similar)
  • 80 g of plain flour

To serve (optional) baby bocconcini (or small pieces of mozzarella cheese), a little olive oil, fresh basil or fresh thyme.

Method:

  1.  Preheat the oven to 250°C.  Peel onions, capsicums, remove seeds, cut in 1 cm thick wedges, and place on the roasting tray. Add garlic, tomatoes, and other prepared vegetables.  Add the olive oil. Toss. Crack salt on top.  Roast for 10 minutes or until just cooked (then remove from the oven and set aside – keep the oven gnocchi ingredientson).
  2. In a large bowl, combine the ricotta, flour and parmesan. Make a ball. If the ball breaks add a few spoons of water until consistent, if it is too sticky, add a little flour. Divide the ball into four.
  3. Working on a lightly floured kitchen bench, roll each in a long 1-1.5 cm thick log (Tip: a bit like when you made clay pots at high school from rolled clay if you ever did that). Cut each roll every two centimetres.  cutting ricotta gnocchi
  4. Boil water in a large saucepan. When the water is boiling add half of the ricotta gnocchi. They will fall at the bottom.  With a slotted spoon, remove them from the water as soon as they come up floating to the top and place them over the vegetables.
  5. When all the gnocchis are cooked and placed on the vegetable. gnochis prepsAdd the fresh thyme, bocconcini/mozzarella, a filet of olive soil and place back in the oven until slightly golden.  Remove the ricotta gnocchi from the oven. If using fresh basil rather than thyme, add the basil leaves. Serve.

 

Another school lunchbox bake!

Ricotta muffins

Here goes another school lunchbox bake.  This one is born out of last week storms. From Friday to Sunday, we had strong lightning storms at the end of the days, the storms were quite gusty too! As a result we lost power for a couple of days from Sunday.  Not just our house, but all of Scotland Island and the western foreshore actually (map here); a couple of trees brought lines down.

Back to my story, I had this block of beautiful ricotta in the fridge which on day two I realised was not going to last much longer.  What do you do with ricotta.  Ricotta pancake? Yum, but, no thank you that day.  Pasta ricotta bake? Yum, well, one of my daughter is not fan. I was also planning to bake a plain cake of some sort and divide into portions for the children’s lunch boxes.  Think a second, what do you like ricotta with? Orange, honey, rhubarb, figs, berries, nuts…all those end of summer, early autumn flavours.

And them these two muffins recipes were born:

Raspberry and ricotta muffin and Orange, honey, walnut and ricotta muffin. Really good and not dry at all (ricotta based cakes can be a little dry).

Honey walnut ricotta muffinsThe orange, honey, walnut and ricotta muffins

The cake of the week, a 4 minutes chocolate mousse cake

This is the cake of the week. I had been going through my list of recipes “to try”. I must have had this one for a few years!

In essence it is a chocolate cake.  What is great is the texture, light and soft. The taste is intense chocolate heaven! Ahah! It is very strong in chocolate warning. We had this cake over two dinners.  Try it, it will take 10 minutes to prepare and 4 to bake!

It is not a very tall cake (or use a smaller diameter tin than me, it was my smallest at 18 cm). The recipe is HERE.

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Pages Updates

I have updated the birthday cakes page and I am updating the lunchboxes page at the moment.  Keep browsing!

 

 

Walnut, Honey, Orange and Ricotta Muffins

Walnut, Honey, Orange and Ricotta Muffins, or maybe in short the “back to school” muffin. Why? Because the flavours match the season of the first month back at school. These muffins are great for lunch boxes.  They keep for a few days in an airtight container or you can freeze them.

This is one of my own recipes, fresh off the press by trying to marry the ice taste of ricotta with something that children will go for.  I made another recipe that day, equally nice, the raspberry and ricotta muffin (CLICK HERE).

This is an easy recipe.

Makes 15.

Ingredients:

  • 1 ½ cup of ricotta
  • 250 g of plain flour
  • 2 tsp of raising powder
  • 130 g of melted butter
  • 200g of sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 very large tbsp. of honey
  • Juices of 2 small oranges (1.5 if large ones)
  • 1 cup of sultanas
  • 2 cups of walnuts
Method:
  1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C
  2. Mix the ricotta, sugar and eggs until the mix is completely smooth (no ricotta lumps left)
  3. Add the honey and orange juice.
  4. Add the flour, raising powder, sultanas together, mix well.  Then add the walnuts and mix.
  5. Using a large spoon, spoon mixture in muffin cases and bake until well golden.

 

 

Raspberry & ricotta Muffins

Here is a raspberry and ricotta muffin recipe which is another  great way to use excess ricotta, something different to making ricotta pancakes (which is really good too!).  I made up another ricotta muffin recipe the same day, they are pretty good too: Walnut, honey, orange and ricotta muffins (CLICK HERE).

Makes 15

Ingredients:
  • 1 ½ cup of ricotta
  • 250 g of plain flour
  • 2 tsp of raising powder
  • 130 g of melted butter
  • 200 g of white sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup of milk
  • 2 cups of frozen raspberries (do not thaw them)
  • Some coarse granular sugar for the top
Method:
  1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C
  2. Mix the ricotta, milk, sugar and eggs until the mix is completely smooth (no ricotta lumps left)
  3. Add the flour and raising powder, mix well
  4. Add the raspberries gently.
  5. Using a large spoon, spoon mixture in muffin cases. Sprinkle with granulated sugar.  Bake until well golden.

ricotta & raspberry muffins