easy home made ricotta – donna hay

I stumbled across this quick and easy recipe for home-made ricotta whilst I was browsing and drooling over a Donna Hay App on my iPad, and knew immediately that I had to give it a try.

I decided to use a tub of double cream that I had frozen two weeks ago and figured since it was being cooked anyway it wouldn’t matter. I thawed the cream in the fridge overnight and discovered that it didn’t split in the way that single cream splits when frozen and thawed.

Makes about 1 cup (250g)

• 3 cups (750ml) milk
• 1 cup (250ml) double (thick) cream
• 1/2 t sea salt flakes
• 2 T lemon juice

Line a sieve with a piece of muslin cloth and set this over a large (deep bowl).  In a pot with a heavy base put the milk, cream and salt and bring it to the boil whilst stirring constantly.  As it just starts to boil (bubble), add the 2 T of lemon juice and reduce the heat and allow it to simmer for 2 minutes.  Remove it from the heat and let it sit at room temperature for 5 minutes.  Stain it in the sieve and let it stand for 1 hour.  Scrape the ricotta out the cloth and place in an airtight container in the fridge until ready use.

It was really that simple and yielded a delicious and creamy ricotta.

I love ricotta because it gives a wonderfully light and fluffy texture to many dishes.  It is fairly neutral in flavour so the perfect base to compliment both sweet and savoury flavours.

I love to add it to my flapjacks / hotcakes and it works so well in many pasta dishes and with eggs in a frittata.