Mini Ricotta Cakes

[gillaan]

I'm sure I'm not the only person who spent Sunday morning baking for Mother's Day... I wanted to make something savoury initially, but relented with a cake recipe as it involved the fewest ingredients that weren't already in the pantry.  They were absolutely delicious*!  While the cornflour I used was wheat-based, this could easily be made as a gluten free recipe by using pure corn cornflour. 


Mini Ricotta Cakes

• 6 eggs
• 750g fresh ricotta cheese
• 3 tablespoons cornflour, sieved
• 1.25 cups caster sugar
• 1/3 cup sultanas
• 1/2 cup dry sherry (but you could easily use brandy, cointreau, kahlua, etc)

Put the sultanas and alcohol together in a bowl to soak.  I'd expect the longer the better, I did this for 30 mins though.
Preheat the oven to 160 Celsius. 
Take the sultanas in alcohol and transfer them to a small saucepan over low heat and warm/simmer for about five minutes.  Take off the heat and leave til the saucepan is cool to touch.
Place the eggs, ricotta, cornflour and sugar together in a food processor or blender and process until smooth.  Check the cornflour hasn't stuck to the sides, scraping them down before a final whizz.
Stir in the alcoholic sultana mix from the saucepan.
Place 14-16 muffin patty cases into 1-2 muffin trays.  Your mileage may vary, but I found 12 wasn't anywhere near enough.
Bake for 30-35 minutes or until they seem firm. 
After baking, the muffins could be removed from the tray when cool enough to touch, but I was lazy and left them til they were stone cold.

The end result:


*This opinion was confirmed by 3 mothers present at afternoon tea, including mine, so I think I hit the target demographic spot-on :-)