MY DAUGHTERS, ELIZABETH AND MARION, are headed home from UVM today, and tomorrow we'll bake a cassata, among other niceties, for the Thanksgiving table. I haven't quite settled on a recipe.
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Truth be told, I much prefer the smooth, rich taste of cream cheese over ricotta in a cake. My mother, Josephine Berretta Buel, who could have been a stand in for Rita Hayworth, only with darker hair and eyes, made the most luscious cheesecake imaginable. Not, though, with ricotta.
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For this holiday, I want something silky and familiar, but with a more traditional Sicilian flair, and the jewelry of candied fruit as well. I want a cake that's a feast for the eyes. After all, we have a reputation to uphold.
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We'll scour the cookbooks this afternoon and report back.
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Postscript: We didn't find a recipe we'll use straight off, so we're making one up. We'll beat 3 packages of cream cheese with 1 cup of sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla, maybe add a cup of sour cream (we'll see how we feel), blend in 2 cups of whole milk ricotta, beat in egg yolks, then fold the mixture gently with the beaten whites. Bake in a low oven in a spring-form pan atop a crust of crushed almonds (a nod to my mother). We're debating the chocolate layer, as there's some objection to that at present. And we'll adorn the whole with candied fruits. Film at 11.
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3 comments:
Hey, wait a minute--wasn't Rita Hayworth the queen of cheesecake back in the 1940s? (Not that kind of cheesecake.) I only met your mother once, but I can vouch for the resemblance. All the women in your family are clearly movie-star gorgeous.
You are very kind! Have a very lovely Thanksgiving, Palinurus. BTW, thank you so much for your subscription. Cheers to you and yours. . .
And a happy Thanksgiving to your family and you! It's so nice to see your affection for your Sicilian roots, especially from the Pacific Northwest vantage point, where ethnic roots have vanished and everything is bland and boring. Are you cooking the turkey with tomato sauce, by any chance?
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