L `origin of this cake is Arabic, and of course his name.
"Qas'at" in Arabic means bowl; cassata is, in fact, a real box of ingredients.
Initially, the "bowl" was just a pastry filled with sweetened ricotta and then baked. Subsequently, it appears in the Norman period, become colorful and sweet is the sweet that so many know, made of sponge cake, marzipan, candied fruit, an explosion of colors and ingredients.
To distinguish the first version, with baking, from that obtained by blending ingredients cooked and processed separately, the Sicilians still call the first "Cassata baked" and the second "Cassata" and nothing else.
certainly less sweet and less cloying, but less good in the second and perhaps less calories, "quashed the oven" comes from the oven, now every day, not only from all the pastry shops of Palermo but also by almost all bakeries in the city.
It is not difficult to make at home, but the palate of any superfine Palermo is satisfied only by your trusted supplier, often a bakery or pastry away from home, a place where, as we say here in Palermo, "he lost his shoes on signuruzzu", namely, our Lord, that very little attention to your shoes and continually loses in very difficult to reach.
For the pastry:
500 g flour 225 g butter or lard
150 g sugar 50 g 5 g ammonia
milk or a teaspoon of cream of tartar 1 egg
lemon zest
For the filling of cottage cheese
K
a sheep cheese, 300 g of sugar, chocolate chips to taste
(If the ricotta is cow's increase of 150 g sugar)
procedure
Soften butter and mix with sugar until creamy, add egg and mix the `cream and milk. Continue adding the `ammonia (or cream of tartar) and the grated rind of lemon.
Now add the flour and knead gently with your hands until it forms a soft ball and soda. Let dough rest in the 'fridge for two hours.Prepare the ricotta cream by combining the ricotta, sieved with sugar and chocolate.
I use the food processor to mix ricotta cheese with sugar, so I avoid scour the ricotta. But in this case, the cream must remain a little bit in the fridge to solidify.
Roll with a rolling pin a piece of pastry in half an inch thick and line the bottom and sides of a greased and floured cake pan (mine has a diameter of 23 cm and the walls a little bit and I flared and ' advanced quite a bit of pastry). Fill the box thus obtained with all the cheese and cover with a disc of pastry too 'spread it thinly.
Tuck the edges of the cover well making them adhere to the walls of the pie. Put in oven at 220 degrees for half an 'hour, checking the color and basic cooking cake. Allow to cool before you turn it upside down and decorate it with plenty of icing sugar. The next day will be good and two days later even more.
