Torta di latticini alla Lucana : a southern italian speciality

The dessert translates to “dairy cake” in english and is made with a variety of dairy products including ricotta and fresh cheese.

Torta di Latticini alla Lucana is technically a savory pie with ricotta, pecorino and salsiccia but with the addition of sugar, it was long considered peasant food of the cave dwellers living in Matera, as it used the ingredients available to local farmers, such as sheep’s cheese and salami.

For the pastry
00 flour 300 g
cold butter 170 g
powdered sugar 120 g
egg yolks 3 (60 g)
vanilla 1 teaspoon
fine salt 1 pinch

For the cream
cow’s milk ricotta 750 g
egg yolks 3 (60 g)
powdered sugar 100 g
ground cinnamon 1 level teaspoon
grated zest of 1 lemon

The pastry
Place the butter and flour in a pastry cutter. Mix briefly to make the butter sandy. Add: sugar, vanilla, salt and yolks. Run machine to mix and compact*.

Transfer mixture to a pastry board and knead quickly. Form into a ball, flatten and spread between two sheets of parchment paper to ½ cm thickness. Leave to rest in the fridge for 1 hour.

Then take the dough and let it soften. Place it in the mold, remove the excess dough and prick the bottom with a fork. Roll out the excess pastry again to a thickness of 2 mm and store in the fridge with the tart base.

For the cream
In a bowl, sift the ricotta** twice. Add the sifted powdered sugar and mix. Add the egg yolks, lemon zest and cinnamon and mix.

Assemble the tart
Take the pan and place the ricotta cream inside.

From the remaining pastry, cut 10 strips 2 cm wide using a notched cookie cutter. Spread the strips over the tart, criss-crossing them to form lozenges. Remove excess pastry***.

Bake in a static oven at 175° for 50 minutes. Remove the tart from the oven and leave to cool. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve!