Despite the title you’ve just read, I’d like to talk about ricotta cheesecake for a minute. One of my favorite places to eat in New York is Becco, and that is mostly because of their ricotta cheesecake. When Quinn asked what I wanted for dessert on my recent birthday, I really wanted to try to duplicate it. After a quite thorough search of the web, my cookbooks, and the bookstore’s cookbooks, I never found a recipe that seemed quite right. So, we dove in and made one anyway. It was not good. At all.
That’s how we ended up with this German chocolate cake for my little birthday celebration. Quinn did most of the work on my behalf, but I couldn’t resist helping out. He whipped up the cake, and I made the sauce.
This kind of cake is one of my very favorites. Coconut and pecans are two of my favorite things, and to have them combined together on top of chocolate cake… Well, how can you go wrong? I’ll tell you how. Not everyone likes coconut and pecans. With some encouragement from my dear friend Tonya (thanks, by the way), I came up with a solution in the form of this recipe from Southern Living.
The coconut-pecan component is a sauce that can be ladled onto the cake when it’s served. So, in deference to the non-coconut-ers and non-pecan-ers, there were alternative toppings. Quinn made some kind of caramel sauce. Honestly, I wasn’t in the kitchen at the time, and I have no idea how he did that. I also made one of my stand-by sauces, a white chocolate-raspberry sauce that’s shown up on this little blog before.
The result? I got the cake I wanted for my birthday (if we’re not counting my initial quest for the ricotta cheesecake), and everyone else got something they liked, too.
By the way, if anyone has recommendations for a ricotta cheesecake recipe (preferably like the one at Becco), I would love to hear about them.
September 11th, 2007 at 9:26 am
I love this idea! German Chocolate cake is one of my favorites, but my husband doesn’t like the coconut-pecan sauce. now we can both have our cake and eat it too!
September 11th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
I can’t wait to see the concoctions that you and T dream up when you guys finally make the MS to RTP transition!
Can I claim my kaluha topping now?
September 12th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Mmmm, german chocolate cake is sooo good…yours looks fantastic.
September 30th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
“Don’t be shy little cake. Come out and see us all.”
I like how the cake is peering over the plate..
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:22 am
I taste this cake when I was in Berlin two months ago, it’s so delicious!