Whey Good!

This morning my parents were coming to visit and I wanted to make something special for them with that ricotta I made yesterday.  I had 12 ounces of ricotta and found a recipe for a ricotta cake in The North End Italian Cookbook.  12 ounces is 1/4 of the ricotta the recipe calls for so I scaled the recipe down and made 3 tiny heart shaped cheesecakes.  It's ricotta, sugar, eggs, flour (just a little), lemon, vanilla and a tiny bit of cream.  The recommended crust is graham cracker crumbs but my box of those was really old and smelled funny, and I didn't have any other graham crackers, so I used some shortbread type cookies I had instead.  They are baked at 425 for 10 minutes and then 350 for another 40, then I turned the oven off and let them cool in the oven.  They are supposed to be served chilled but I didn't have time so they were a little warm.  Not a problem.

We ate the cheesecakes topped with canned peaches, lemon curd, or candied kumquats.  They were terrific!