I swapped a small bag of juicy lemons for a kilo of ricotta the other day. These are the sorts of underground dealings that I dabble in.

I raided the public park by work for decorative flowers yesterday too. I am a bad person.

So I had this kilo of ricotta and endless possibilities. The street value of the stuff was massive. Like $10 of ricotta. That is some serious cash cash dollars there.

So I went to the interwebs in search of a recipe!

I found this ricotta and raspberry cake but I felt like I had overdone it on the old raspberries recently. I am so radical I switched the old rasberries for boysenberries 'cause you know, YOLO. I also added twice as many, and stirred them through, and added cream cheese icing. Woah nelly!! I better check myself before I wreck myself.

So I made this cake and it got eaten. So made another to take to the park to take photos of because my kitchen is hideous. On the way I dropped the cake, wrecked the icing, had a meltdown, drove home, re-iced it and then took it to the park AGAIN. Luckily not many people were at the Parnell rose gardens because taking your take t the park to photograph a cake is really quite weird. Anyway then the cake got eaten again which is good because what good is cake if you can't eat it? Like what would you do with your cake if you didn't eat it? Wait for t to go stale and rancid?

So make this cake. It is delicious. Add lots of berries to make it super moist. Also it is only one layer so for once I didn't have to faff around making sure the layers were even. I whacked the cooled cake upside down and iced the nice flat bottom. Boom. So easy.

Ricotta and Boysenberry Cake

Recklessly adapted from here

Makes a 20cm cake

For the cake:

125g butter, sofened

1 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1 1/2 cups ricotta

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups frozen boysenberries

For the cream cheese icing:

100g cream cheese, softened

20g butter, softened

300g icing sugar (a little more if you want a stiff and pipeable icing)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

or

1 teaspoon of vanilla and a small splash of vanilla depending on your fancy

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees on bake and line a 20cm springform cake tin with baking paper as well as greasing the sides.

Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla until pale. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well in between each addition until fluffy then mix in the ricotta. Sieve in the flour, baking powder and salt and stir until just combined. Tip in the berries and stir through. Transfer the batter to the cake tin and bake for 50-60 minutes until a skewer or knife comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool fully before icing.

To make the icing, beat the cream cheese and butter together until smooth. Gradually add the sugar, if making lemon icing then add enough lemon juice to help loosen the icing. If making vanilla icing Add the vanilla then just enough milk to loosen it up. Beat on high until fluffy.

Flip the cake upside down and spread about half of the icing onto the top. Smooth it to about 2cm from the edge. Fill a piping bag with a star shaped nozzle with the remaining icing and pipe a border around the edge of the cake. Youtube videos on piping borders if you need to see how it is done.

Sprinkle just around the inside of the border some threaded coconut, natural almonds, crushed freeze dried berries and some small flowers to finish.

Enjoy x