As a child, ask me what my favourite food was and hands down,
every time I would say my mum’s lasagne. Being brought up in an Italian family
I was weaned on pasta, even before a lot of my classmates knew what the ‘weird,
radical’ foreign food was. To me it was more common than a fried egg and chips
for tea!
And when I saw that my friend Jac over at vegetarian website
– Tinned Tomatoes – had a new challenge this month called Pasta Please, and
that the theme was cheese, I knew I had to enter. But being Cakeyboi and
predominately sweet, my thoughts turned to sweet lasagne!
Luckily I had also been asked to try some products for a
company called Sugar And Crumbs who supply high quality baking ingredients,
including flavoured cocoa powders and icing sugars. I was sent chocolate orange
cocoa powder, white chocolate blossoms (little curls of chocolate) and natural
orange icing sugar. (I will be using the orange icing sugar at a later date).
I adapted a recipe I found at Food Network and substituted
the regular cocoa powder and orange zest, with the chocolate orange cocoa powder. I also
used chopped white chocolate instead of chocolate chips, and half the amount of
ricotta cheese (half the fat!).
Yield: one 8”x8” baking dish worth
Ingredients:
5 sheets of fresh lasagne – (not dried)
500 grams ricotta cheese
110 grams icing sugar
50 grams chocolate orange cocoa powder
2 large eggs
150 grams chopped white chocolate
50 grams pistachio nuts, chopped and toasted
50 grams of white chocolate blossoms
Method:
Preheat your oven to 170oC. Line an 8”x8” pan with foil.
In a bowl whisk together the cheese, sugar, cocoa powder and
eggs until smooth. Stir through the chopped chocolate. Spread one quarter of
this mix on the bottom of the baking pan and sprinkle with some of the nuts. Lay
a sheet and a half of lasagne on top. Then repeat with the cheese mix, nuts,
more lasagne, finishing with the cheese and nuts.
Pop into the oven for 30
minutes. The lasagne will puff up slightly. Remove from the oven and sprinkle
the chocolate blossoms on top.
Allow this to cool for at least half and hour and then
divide into squares ready to be devoured. As pasta is neither sweet nor
savoury, this works so well with the chocolate orange flavour. The nuts give
great texture and the chopped white chocolate gives a nice contrast to the
cheesey chocolate filling.
As said, I am entering this into the Pasta Please challenge,
hosted this month by Tinned Tomatoes. And the Sugar and Crumbs ingredients were
brilliant – the blossoms were handy to use straight from the bag and the
flavoured cocoa, really was a new one for me! They are to be introducing lots
of new products and if I am sent any to try out, I will be sure to share them
with you. Enjoy!
Disclosure Statement: I received the Sugar and Crumbs items free to review and was not committed to writing a favourable review. The views expressed are my own.
Disclosure Statement: I received the Sugar and Crumbs items free to review and was not committed to writing a favourable review. The views expressed are my own.
