Italian ricotta cake is a classic Italian dessert that Italians make at special gatherings. It is lightly flavored with lemon and moist from the ricotta. This Italian ricotta lemon cake is great served alongside coffee and can be eaten in the morning at breakfast or as a dessert.

The lemon in this ricotta cake:

There are many different Italian ricotta cake recipes but this one is my favorite. This ricotta cake is super moist and has a beautiful delicate flavor of lemon.

The lemon is not overpowering at all!

What type of cake pan to use for this ricotta lemon cake:

I have never been a big fan of specialized baking pans (or any specialized kitchen tools) but I made an exception with this cake pan.

This Italian Ricotta cake is a cake called a ciambella because it is baked in a special ring mold. Ciambella means donut in Italian and this baking mold makes this beautiful shape that Italians love to use when baking their cakes.

If you do not have a round cake mold, this cake can be made in a regular cake pan as well. For presentation, I love using the ring mold.

There are many different cake pans you can use to bake this cake.

Cake pans that work great for this Italian Ricotta Cake recipe:

A Savarin mold (which is what I used here. This one is a 9.5 inch round nonstick mold (use as is for this recipe)
The standard 9 inch round cake pan. (start by adding an additional 10 minutes more to the bake time)
Large Bundt pan (add about 10 minutes or so to the bake time)
Individual bundt cake pan (you will want to decrease the bake time by ¼ if you are making small individual serving size bundt cakes)

To use any of these pans, you would want to adjust the baking time and check the doneness of the cake periodically. Every oven will vary so this is good practice on any baking recipe.

The ingredients in this cake could not be simpler. There are not many and there are no special ingredients that you cannot find at your regular grocery store.

The ingredients in this Ricotta Lemon Cake are:

All purpose flour
Whole milk ricotta (try to use whole milk since this has the most flavor)
Eggs
Baking powder
Sugar
Vanilla
Lemon
Olive oil
Milk

All very simple ingredients!

How to avoid air bubbles in your ricotta cake:

When making a ricotta cake, the recipes usually involve a lot of mixing or beating the eggs. This cake is no different.

The importance of me mentioning this is that when you beat your ingredients for a long time you will develop air bubbles (and lots of them). If you do not have a way to get rid of the air bubbles, your cake will have lots of holes.

Now this is not the end of the world if your cake has holes in it. It will not affect the taste either.

But to avoid these air bubbles, you will want to bang your cake pan (with the batter in it) very hard on the counter a few times to pop as many of these air bubbles as you can before you bake them in.

For making this ricotta lemon cake, you just need to follow these steps:

Sift your dry ingredients into a bowl.
Beat your wet ingredients for a few minutes until thick.
Fold in your ricotta and then your dry ingredients into your bowl of wet ingredients.
Pour it all into a cake pan.
Sprinkle with a little brown sugar (optional but recommended).
Give the cake pan a few good bangs to release the air bubbles.
Bake.

Topping your ricotta cake:

I like to dust my cakes with powdered sugar once they are cooled. This not only makes the cake look beautiful, it adds a little extra sweetness to the cake.

Because I am not a huge fan of frosting, powdered sugar dusted lightly over my desserts is just enough extra sweetness and it makes it pretty. I do like to serve my desserts with homemade whipped cream on the side.

I add only a touch of sugar to the cream when I do this.

I try to rely on vanilla extract to give that extra flavor to the cream. You can of course add any special additions you love.

If you do have a sweet tooth and want lots of extra sweetness on top of this cake, you would really like my vanilla condensed milk sauce. It takes only a few minutes to make and it is really delicious.

The special ingredient on top of this ricotta cake:

This recipe has you add a sprinkle of brown sugar to the cake before baking. There is no set amount to add but it does really add a nice flavor to the cake.

This cake will not be overly sweet and the addition of the brown sugar won't make it that way either. It is a nice balanced cake with no overpowering notes of any kind.

I would make sure not to skip this step!

I hope you give this cake a try and love it as much as I do. If you do end up loving this cake and want to try another ciambella cake recipe, you would definitely like my ciambella yogurt cake with olive oil.

A completely different flavor profile from this one but also very delicious.

More tips for this ricotta cake:

Freezing ricotta cake-

Ricotta cake freezes very well. Just wrap the cooled cake with plastic wrap and place in a freezer proof bag. When you want to thaw it, just place it in the fridge overnight (inside its bag) and let it defrost that way.

Should you refrigerate ricotta cake?

I like to leave my ricotta cake out for one day on the counter under a cake dome. After that, it goes in the fridge to keep it fresh. Ricotta cake has a lot of moisture so it can spoil quickly.

What can I do with the leftover ricotta cheese from this recipe?

I always make my ricotta pancakes with the leftover ricotta. Ricotta lasts for a couple weeks in the fridge so you can make a batch of these yummy pancakes later in the week after you've made this recipe.

You can also use the leftover ricotta to make my ham and ricotta puff pastry calzones , ricotta pasta or my fresh ricotta and tomato salad.

For More Delicious Cake Recipes:

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