"Cassata di Graziella" A Sicilian Cassata ~ My Favorite Cake!

September 11, 2008 at 6:17 am | Posted in Recipes | 4 Comments
Tags: baking, cake, cassata, cookbook, Cooking with Grace, Grace Pilato, Italian Cassata, Italian Cookbook, Sicilian Cassata

 UPDATED:  I lost my photos for most of this blog, but since this is one of my most viewed posts, I wanted to get a few back up, and I will be making this cake again next week, and hopefully I’ll have time to post the entire recipe–which consists of about 5 separate recipes.

This cake is beyond amazing.  I’ve never had another cake like this.  Layers include a lemon curd, chocolate mousse, ricotta cream with chocolate chips, whipped cream icing, and rum syrup. 

Best Sicilian Cassata recipe EVER!

  

 

Grace Pilato’s book ,”Cooking With Grace” is one of my favorite cookbooks!  I highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to cook great food.
I have made her “Graziella’s Decadent Cake” or “Cassata di Graziella”, two times now.  I would be lying if I told you this is easy.  It requires more effort than most cakes.  It’s work and it’s time consuming, but if you break parts down over  a few days, it can make the process easier, and if you put your heart into it, you may even have fun!  
First you need a sponge cake.  I have tried Grace’s recipe 3 times and did not prefer it  over the basic sponge cake recipe in Pillsbury or any basic recipe. So, I started with a homemade sponge cake.  DO NOT use a non-stick sponge cake tube pan – I made that mistake once and it couldn’t climb the edges high enough.  I use a regular tube cake pan.

There are 5 more recipes to complete for this cake and they are as follows:
 1 recipe Rum Syrup
2 Cups Mama Rosa’s Lemon Custard Cream
2 cups Chocolate Custard Cream
1 recipe Ricotta Cloud Cream 
1 recipe Whipped Cream Frosting

You may also choose to use Grace’s homemade ricotta recipe for the Ricotta CLoud Cream,  I used it one time and used store the next- both worked fine.

Completed Lemon and Chocolate Custards Mmmm

 

The photo above shows the cake with all 4 layers of Custards and creams, right before the WHipped Cream Frosting is added. The skewers are used to keep the cake from flopping over, but my sponge cake was too thin this time so there was some flopping, but the frosting hides all flaws well and when people take a bite, they could care less what the cake looks like.
The Ricotta Cloud Dream has mini- chocolate chips in it.  The cake is drowned in rum syrup.
Remember to drain store bought ricotta in a strainer to remove all moisture. 

I lost my photo of the fully decorated cassata, but here is another slice:

It’s worth buying the book for this cake alone!

NOTE: Original blog was posted on LJ in 2006

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