The Extra Step You Shouldn't Skip When Adding Ricotta To Desserts

Ricotta is a fresh Italian cheese with a sweet, slightly milky flavor and a light, airy texture. Often used in various baked pastas, like lasagna with salami or baked ziti, or to dot on top of pizza, it's also a popular ingredient in some desserts thanks to its creaminess – and no, it doesn't make your baked goods taste like cheese. While ricotta's high moisture helps produce its signature smooth texture, this same moisture can be detrimental to your desserts because too much of it can lead to a heavy and gummy end result. To combat this, there's one important step that you need to take when prepping it for your desserts: draining it.

Straining ricotta helps remove that excess moisture so that you get a perfect dessert each and every time. While you may think there are times where that extra moisture can do your dessert good, it's best to get that moisture from other wet ingredients in the recipe, like eggs or milk, since those will have specific amounts. To drain your ricotta, you can simply dump the ricotta into a cheese cloth set over a mesh strainer. Lay that over a bowl, cover everything with plastic wrap and allow it to drain in the refrigerator overnight. Keep in mind that you'll want to do this for both homemade ricotta as well as the pre-packaged ones you buy in the store (like Polly-O or Galbani brands).

Ricotta is best used in a recipe along with the other wet ingredients. You'll typically notice that adding ricotta occurs in the same step as when you would add vanilla extract or eggs, although you may sometimes see it creamed in with the butter and sugar. While it's best to follow the recipe as written, there may be instances where you want to add ricotta in — like if you want to transform your basic pancake recipe into ricotta pancakes. For this, adding 1 cup of ricotta per 2 cups of dry pancake mix should do the trick.

While ricotta often acts as a supporting character in desserts like Italian ricotta cookies or lemon ricotta cake, you can consider using ricotta as the star of the show. Desserts like whipped ricotta, where you literally blend ricotta up until it's a smooth and dreamy consistency before topping it with berries or honey, can surprise your guests. It can also be used as a filling for desserts like Sicilian cannolis or cheese danishes.