Our family decided to go with a contemporary Christmas dessert rather than the traditional Christmas pudding (though Grandma still made Christmas cake). My mum had recently made some limoncello so when I saw this recipe in Zarbo, it looked too good to pass up. Sadly, I didn’t get any photos of it before it was cut and partially demolished on Christmas day. However, I took these on Boxing Day – when I devoured some of it for breakfast. The photos aren’t fantastic (you can tell it was early morning) but I can assure you the cake was delicious – and packed a punch! It was by far the biggest cheese cake I’ve ever made.
The recipe is taken from Zarbo cookbook (http://www.zarbo.co.nz/afawcs0139996/CATID=62/ID=787/SID=1028445078/productdetails.html) and is as follows:
Ingredients:
(Italian Pastry – veeery short!)
70g butter
350g flour
100g sugar
pinch of salt
100g olive oil
70mls water
(Filling)
1.5kg cottage cheese or handmade ricotta
6 eggs
125g butter, melted
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup limoncello (can be substituted by lemon juice and zest)
1 cup flour
1 cup mixed peel
1/2 cup dried apricots (I didn’t use these and added extra of the other dried fruit)
1 cup sultanas
Directions:
For the pastry, rub the butter into the flour, sugar and salt. This should resemble fine breadcrumbs. Then add oil and water, mixing to make a smooth dough.
Grease a 26 cm cake pan and line base and sides with pastry (press into pan rather than trying to roll, the pastry is very short). Refrigerate the pastry while preparing the filling.
For filling, place cottage cheese in a bowl and beat for 1 min to smooth it a little. Add ingredients in the order listed, combining well after each addition. Fold through the dried fruit carefully. Pour into pastry case. Bake at 180 degrees celsius for an hour – an hour and twenty mins (basically until set).
DONE! Eat with liberal amounts of cream (or leftover filling, if there is any).