Italian Ricotta Cocoa Crostata Recipe

This Italian ricotta cocoa crostata is crunchy, chocolaty (inside, and outside) with delicious sweet ricotta and chocolate chips filling. The perfect breakfast or after-dinner dessert for adults and kids.

Why you’ll love

• Is chocolaty
• Easy to make
• The chocolate and ricotta cheese are a winning match
• A great make-ahead recipe
• Perfect dessert for all the family

What is the crostata?

Crostata is an Italian classic dessert and is the favorite snack among the kids. In Italy, every Italian has his obsession regarding the texture, who prefers it crunchy, who prefers it thin, who wants it crumbly, and who wants it thick and soft. Every family has its own recipe and within every ingredient, you will get a different result.

The crostata is made from:

• dough– is a sweet crumbly texture call “Pasta Frolla“
• filling – can be jam, chocolate, ricotta, and also fresh fruits

What ingredients have the dough we use for this Italian ricotta cocoa crostata?

The dough is super easy to make. It has few ingredients, but to achieve the best results, you will need to pay attention to choose the right ingredient.

• Flour– it needs to be poor of gluten, we are not looking to give elasticity to the dough here. Plain flour will work just fine.
• Cocoa– If we want to create a cacao pastry, as in this recipe, we need to remove a small amount of flour and replace it with cocoa powder.
• Butter– it needs to be cold from the fridge. The butter is fat, and it gives a crumbly texture to it. The more butter we add the crumblier texture we will have.
• Sugar– it makes the dough crunchy, here we can transform the result of the dough by adding or removing the sugar to balance the crunchiness of the texture. This recipe calls for Icing sugar, as it will give better-unified cooking.
• Eggs– Try to use super fresh eggs and cold from the fridge, always prefer Organic or free-range eggs.
• Flavour– it can be a vanilla seeds, the peel of one unwaxed lemon o/and a peel of unwaxed orange.
• Salt– it enhances the flavor of the cake, needs to be added.

Step by step introductions

Make the dough

• Step one– Place the flour, the cocoa, the sugar, and the butter on a food processor, turn the power on medium, and stop the stand mixer when you will get a sandy texture.
• Step two– At this point, we must proceed by hand. Transfer the mixture to a medium bowl. Add the yolks, the flavor, and the salt. Create a nice uniform dough*.

*Note: work the mixture very quickly and stop until you have created a ball. Don’t overwork the dough otherwise, it will break once starting to roll it.

• Step three– Press gently the dough with a rolling pin all over it and wrap it with baking paper.
• Step four– Leave to rest in the fridge for 1 hour and 30 minutes. The rest phase is essential for achieve a good, sweet shortcrust pastry.

TIP: If you are in a rush place it in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Make the filling

• Step one– Turn the fan oven to conventional 160°c /180°c static, Gas mark 4, Fahrenheit 350°F.
• Step two– Add the ricotta, the sugar, the flavour, the chocolate and the liquor in a medium bowl and whisk until is all combined.

Assemble the crostata

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• Step one– After the resting time, on a lightly floured work surface, place more than half of the pastry and lightly flour the top. Roll the pastry with a rolling pin until you will have 5mm of thickness and quite large and long enough to cover the tart tin, with the rest of the pastry obtain two stripes of 4 cm large with a 5mm thickness.

TIP: If you want a look more classic of your crostata, as a grid, you will need to cut more strips of 1.50 cm wide to cover the crostata.

• Step two– Spread some butter inside the tart tin, this will help to cook the crostata more evenly. Roll the pastry around the rolling pin and gently place it on the tart tin and press gently to the bottom and the side and trim off the excess of the pastry.
• Step three– Pour the filling in the base of the pastry and place the two stripes on the top leaving a space in the middle. With a fork seal the edge of the pastry. Place it on the fridge for 10 minutes, so the butter will be solid and will help to give a better crust.
• Step four– Cook for 40 minutes, allow to cool down before serving.

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