Celebrating with Extraordinary Cakes Lemon Ricotta

There are times when it's absolutely appropriate to spend a week making a complicated and multi-layer cake, and I decided that my 23rd birthday was one of those occasions. I love excuses to break out the expensive bottle of wine I've been saving, wear my favorite dress and get my best friends together to enjoy a beautiful day. This Lemon Ricotta Cake was my favorite treat when I worked at Extraordinary Desserts in San Diego, and I was excited to see it in Karen Krasne's Extraordinary Cakes cookbook.

Ricotta cake is brushed with lemon simple syrup, then layered with lemon whipped cream, lemon curd and fresh blueberries and blackberries and topped off with lemon buttercream frosting. This dessert is pillowy and creamy with contrasting sweet and tart, the perfect way to celebrate a summer day.

The recipe calls for making the lemon curd from scratch, but you could easily use store-bought. The hardest part of the recipe is orchestrating the many components and making sure they're ready at the right times during the assembly process. I won't even try to reprint the multi-page recipe here, but when you buy the book (because you should!) make sure you read through everything multiple times so you have the complete picture.