
I have a go to flourless orange cake which I adore, but the other day had some divine paesanella ricotta hanging around that needed to be used. Seeing as I’m doing the whole no carbs with fat/protein and no refined carbs a nifty little batch of ricotta gnocchi was out of the question (quietly sobs) and I was at a bit of a loss when I came across this Ben O’Donoghue and thought BINGO! It has a smidge of (semolina) flour in it but I was willing to overlook it. I love Ben’s recipes and he was always my favourite in Surfing the Menu. Curtis Stone is just a little to much of a show-pony-pretty-boy for my cooking likes.
‘My’ custard powder pastry recipe and the associated free-form apple pie is his Nan’s and I reckon that’s pretty cool.
So let’s get on with it.

Lemon ricotta cake (in which I used oranges)
Recipe from: At home with Ben, Ben O’Donoghue
- 225g butter
- 250g sugar
- 6 eggs, separated
- 250g ground almonds
- 65g semolina flour
- Juice of 3 lemons
- Rind of 6 lemons
- 300g ricotta
- 1/2 cup sugar
- Preheat oven to 160C and grease and line a 26cm springform cake tin
- Beat the butter and sugar until very pale then add the egg yolks one at a time
- Combine the almond meal, semolina, half the lemon zest and half the juice (although when I made it with oranges I added all the zest because I didn’t read the recipe properly. Rookie mistake) and fold into the butter and sugar mixture
- Crumble in the ricotta and fold through (Ben appears to leave it in little chunks whereas my ricotta was wetter so was more incorporated)
- Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks and then fold through the mixture
- Pour into the tin and bake for 40mins or until a skewer comes out clean (I find with flourless cakes the time can vary massively – just persevere and cover with foil if you’re worried the top is getting too dark)
- Make a syrup with the remaining juice, zest, 1/2 cup of sugar and a cup of water by bringing it to the boil then reducing by half (I sort of forgot to read this bit and just made a syrup of equal parts sugar and juice)
- Pour over the cake and eat until you can eat no more.

Onward!