This decadent lemon ricotta cake is made extra special with a toasted pistachio frosting.

This Lemon Ricotta Cake with Toasted Pistachio Frosting was my entry for this year’s Lancewood CakeOff contest. The recipe for the Lemon Ricotta Cake has been posted on the blog before and it is truly a delicious gluten free cake and has been a very popular recipe since it first appeared.

But I wanted to make it even more special and decided to make a toasted pistachio frosting. It is rich and decadent but I belong to the school of thought that when it comes to cake you either go big or eat a salad. But in saying that, I realized afterwards that making it as a double layer cake is just too much so the recipe below is for a one layer cake with frosting and not the two layers you see in the images. Friends of mine who tasted the two layer extravaganza disagreed completely so if you want to go big, double the recipe for both the batter and frosting.

With all the richness coming from the nuts and icing sugar in the frosting you need to use the most fragrant lemons you can find so I would suggest finding some organic ones at the market. Somehow lemon zest from supermarket lemons don’t seem to be that sharp anymore.

The frosting has rich undertones of caramel and that comes from one of my favourite finds of the year. Natura Sugar’s Demerara Icing Sugar. This natural sugar is unrefined and has not had the molasses taken out and the slightly off white colour adds to the beautiful sandy golden brown colour of the frosting that is so fitting for the pistachios.

Click here for the frosting recipe.

Lemon Ricotta Cake and Pistachio Frosting

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star

5 from 2 reviews

Author: Hein van Tonder

Print Recipe

Ingredients

Scale

Cake

120 g butter (softened)
200 g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup lemon zest
4 eggs (separated)
240 g almond meal
300 g ricotta

Frosting:

Click the link above for the recipe.

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Heat oven to 180 degrees C and line the base and sides of a 20cm round cake tin with baking paper.
Place 100g of the castor sugar and the lemon zest in a food processor and blitz until finely ground.
Then beat the butter, vanilla and sugar/zest mix together for about 10 minutes until pale and creamy.
Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating the mixture well after each egg yolk is added.
Add the almond meal and beat to combine and then fold the ricotta through the almond mixture.
Beat the egg whites in a clean bowl until soft peaks form.
Gradually add the remaining sugar to the egg whites and whisk until stiff peaks have formed. Mix a third of the egg whites into the cake mixture, then
gently fold in the rest of the egg white mixture.
Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and smooth the top
Bake for 40-45 minutes until cooked and firm to the touch
Allow to cool completely in the cake tin before removing