Lovely little cups of pudding made with ricotta cheese, eggs, sugar and cream. Then garnished with a strawberry sauce (fresh strawberries, please) that has some strained sauce and some strawberry pieces.
A dear friend is just recovering from dreadful surgery, chemo and radiation of a tumor on his tongue, but deep down in the throat. He’s only just begun to be able to swallow again. For weeks he couldn’t even do normal swallowing at all, and when I made this a couple of weeks ago he was just beginning to be able to eat puddings and soft, loose things like oatmeal and smooth soup. So I promised him, and his wife, that I’d bring them a pudding of some sort. I kept out two little cups (the above photo) so I could taste it myself. Since he’s lost a lot of weight through this, I thought it would be good to give some kind of protein substance to the pudding I’d make, so I found this old recipe for a ricotta pudding, but lightened up with a soufflé-like preparation.
This definitely is not a custard – you know what I mean – the kind that is almost silky in the mouth – this pudding has much more mouth-feel than that, but it’s not chewy. It’s light (because of the egg whites mixed to a peak, then folded into the pudding) yet the pudding does have substance to it. Hard to explain.
The strawberry part can be made really easily if you bought frozen berries, defrosted them, then just pushed them through a sieve (or whizzed them up in the blender, then drained them through a sieve). My friend has difficulty with acidic things (they still sting his healing, but tender throat tissues) so I made the sauce two ways – part of it whizzed up completely with pulp and all (the liquid part you see in the photos) and then some added small pieces of berries added in. I cautioned them to add some more sugar to the sauce as I thought it was way too tart – and especially for him with his tender throat. I suppose the sauce depends on how sweet the berries are. We should be mid-season with strawberries now, but in this case, the ones I had, although sweet enough for me, didn’t taste so sweet in the sauce. So you can use your own judgment with the addition of more sugar.
The pudding itself was simple enough to make – I used full-fat ricotta which has quite a bit more flavor. As an aside here, I just watched a program on TV today, as I’m writing this, about diets and “low fat” or “lower fat” and the nutritionist on the program said don’t bother buying low fat milk, or low fat ice cream, or low fat cottage cheese, because the amount removed is so minor and it drastically changes (lowers) the flavor. I’ve been buying full fat for quite awhile because I’d read this a year or so ago. Anyway, so you mix up egg yolks, ricotta, sugar (only 1/4 cup for the entire batch), heavy cream, salt and vanilla. How easy is that? Then you fold in beaten egg whites and pour the mixture into ramekins or a baking dish and bake for about 45 minutes in a water bath. Do fill up the dish or ramekins all the way to the top – it doesn’t expand; in fact, once removed from the oven, the pudding deflates a bit – it was quite noticeable in the ramekins – so much so that I only had one worthy of photographing. You can see the 2 ramekins in my photo – and one of those deflated so much it only had about 2 bites of pudding in it. Perhaps it was mostly egg white.
The sauce is comprised of fresh strawberries, sugar and lemon juice. Be cautious about using too much lemon juice – that will also make the berries too tart. That may have been my problem too, since I didn’t measure – I just guessed as I squeezed. If your eggs are large – like really large – the resulting pudding could be pretty sturdy – in which case you might want to have a little pitcher of pouring cream (half and half) at the table.
What’s GOOD: this is a bit of a different pudding – it has a different texture for sure with the ricotta cheese in it – and it’s very mild in flavor. Makes a pretty presentation. It’s comfort food, for sure, and the nicer the strawberries, the better the overall pudding will taste.
What’s NOT: nothing really – it’s pretty easy to make and tastes quite nice. No negatives.
printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook 15/16 file (click link to open recipe)
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Ricotta Soufflé Pudding with Strawberry Sauce
Recipe By: Adapted just slightly from a little cookbook, Puddings A-Z by Marie Simmons
Serving Size: 6
PUDDING:
3 large eggs — separated
15 ounces ricotta cheese — full fat, at room temp
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch salt — added to the egg whites
STRAWBERRY SAUCE:
1 pint strawberries — rinsed, drained
2 tablespoons sugar — or more if needed
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice — or lime juice
1. Preheat oven to 350°F with a rack in the lowest position. Heat a kettle of water to boiling. Lightly butter a 1 1/2-2 quart souffle dish or other round casserole dish. Set the dish in a larger baking pan and set aside.
2. Beat the egg yolks, ricotta, cream, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl with a whisk or electric mixer until well blended.
3. Beat the egg whites and salt in a clean bowl with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Add a spoonful of the whites to the ricotta mixture and fold to lighten. Add remaining whites, gently folding until incorporated and no streaks remain.
4. Transfer mixture to the souffle dish. If using ramekins, fill almost to the top as the pudding doesn’t expand. Place the baking pan in the oven. Carefully add enough boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the souffle dish.
5. Bake until the pudding is puffed and golden and a knife inserted just off center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Let cool in the water bath. Serve warm or chilled, with berry sauce.
6. SAUCE: Slice enough berries to equal 1 cup. If berries are large, halve them first and then slice; set aside. Quarter the remaining berries and place in a food processor with the sugar and lemon or lime juice; puree. Transfer the puree to a sieve set over a bowl and, using a rubber spatula, press the solids through the sieve. Scrape the juices from the underside of the sieve into the bowl. Add the sliced berries to the strained juice, cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. If the sauce gets too thick, thin with cold water, adding about a tablespoon at a time. Taste the sauce to make sure it’s sweet enough – the pudding has very little sugar in it, so you may want more sugar in the sauce, depending on how naturally sweet the berries are. Makes about 1 3/4 cups. Alternately, you can just whiz up the quartered berries, sugar and lemon juice in a blender until the mixture is pureed, and serve as is (with the seeds and pulp, obviously). If you want an easy alternative, defrost frozen unsweetened berries and whiz in the blender, then strain to get a clear juice. In all methods, just add the sliced berries for serving.
Per Serving: 295 Calories; 19g Fat (58.1% calories from fat); 12g Protein; 19g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 169mg Cholesterol; 125mg Sodium.
Toffeeapple
said on May 12th, 2016:
I like the sound of that – not too sweet. I buy full fat everything, always have done, I never trusted the processes involved in the removal of fat anyway and the thought of what might have been added back in to give flavour – well my mind boggles (as we say here)!
Your friend’s surgery sounds dreadful, I do hope that he makes a speedy and full recovery, the poor man.
I think here in the U.S. we got on the low or no fat bandwagon early on. My daughter and her family simply won’t give it up despite recommendations to return to full fat. Oh well . . . carolyn t
hddonna
said on May 15th, 2016:
I’ve been looking for more ways to use ricotta, and this looks quite appealing.
For sure, this pudding has more texture than a traditional one – it was good. Not amazing, but it was certainly nice with the strawberry stuff on top. It kind of stole the flavors, though – strawberry is a “BIG” flavor while ricotta isn’t. . . carolyn t