Little lemon and blueberry ricotta cake! This is a moist, fragrant butter cake, full of delicious ricotta and juicy blueberries, all baked in a small eighteen centimetre size. It's a simple little cake, easy to make and perfect for tea time.

Little lemon and blueberry ricotta cake

And as per all the small-batch baking I've done recently, this is a small cake. I baked it in my beloved eighteen centimetre springform tin. (Which you could also use to make, for example, a small cheesecake!) As you can see, it's quite a deep cake, so I think it would work fine in a twenty centimetre tin as well if that's all you have; it would just be a little shallower.

I usually line cake tins with baking paper; this time I tried something different. Using a tip I learned from German home bakers, I buttered the tin and dusted it with bread crumbs.

Little Lemon and Blueberry Ricotta Cake

The cake was so lovely! It's such a good, simple cake, for afternoon tea (or even breakfast). Being so simple, I was actually surprised by how much we liked it - we kept going back for more, and finished it off within a couple of days. It's really moist and fragrant, with gorgeous sweet pops of blueberries. The lemon zest really enhances all the flavours and makes it zingy and bright. Just lovely. I hope this sweet little cake brightens up your day!

Little Lemon and Blueberry Ricotta Cake

A recipe by Sarah Cooks

Ingredients

Butter and breadcrumbs, for preparing the cake tin

60 grams butter, softened

130 grams caster sugar

225 grams ricotta

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

The zest and juice of 1/4 lemon

140 grams plain flour

Pinch of salt

1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C. Butter an 18-cm springform tin and dust with breadcrumbs. Tilt the tin around to evenly cover the base and sides with a thin layer of breadcrumbs. Tip any excess out and discard.

Beat the 60 grams butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.

Add the ricotta and beat to combine.

Add the egg, vanilla extract, lemon zest and juice and beat in.

Sift in the flour, salt and bicarb, then mix in until just combined.

Add the blueberries and fold in.

Place the batter into the prepared tin and smooth the top.

Bake for 30-45 minutes, or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

Place the cake, in the tin, on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes or so. Remove the cake from the tin and allow to cool completely on the wire rack.

Dust with icing sugar to serve.

Makes 1 x 18cm cake

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

Small cheesecake! The perfect classic cheesecake, in small! Crunchy biscuit base, dense and creamy vanilla and lemon scented filling. It's everything you love in a cheesecake, in a sensible small size.

I'll reiterate that I'm very lucky that we're ok in this lockdown - I'm still working from home, we do most of our shopping online, and a daily walk is achievable for us. And with our baby, I honestly can't remember the last time I was out past eight in the evening! But gosh, it's a long slog. It's hard being patient and just anxiously waiting for the numbers to come out each morning. The daily Daniel Andrews press conference has become essential viewing every day in this household. (It's the best place to get the latest information, but I must say I find the aggressive questioning from certain journalists to be quite stressful). It looks like the overall numbers are finally moving in the right direction, so I'm hopeful we'll all keep doing our part, that numbers will continue to decrease, and that soon restrictions will be able to be cautiously and slowly lifted. We can do it.

This is my favourite cheesecake, so much so that I never even bother with new and exciting cheesecake recipes. This is it. It's all I want in a cheesecake. We have a digestive biscuit base, with a little hint of cinnamon to make it extra inviting. The filling has both cream cheese and sour cream (double dairy!), with egg to help it set, and sugar for (duh) sweetness. It's flavoured with a little lemon zest and vanilla - the lemon zest cuts through the richness and the vanilla gives it that wonderful welcoming aroma. It's creamy, it's rich, it's dense - it's everything you want in a cheesecake, with no extra fussiness to get in the way of the pure deliciousness.

When making it in these dimensions, the cheesecake was quite a bit shallower than normal, but I liked that because it meant a higher biscuit-to-filling ratio. When eaten warm it was light and fluffy (much like a Sara Lee cheesecake; another lockdown treat we enjoyed recently), but once refrigerated it really comes into its own. That's when you get the dense rich creaminess.

And also, I wrote about a smaller cheesecake being more responsible for a small household in lockdown... well, I baked the cheesecake on a Sunday afternoon. It came out of the oven around two o'clock... and by ten o'clock that night it was all gone. WHOOPS.

Small Cheesecake

A recipe by Sarah Cooks

Ingredients

85 grams digestive biscuits

40 grams unsalted butter, melted

Pinch of cinnamon

150 grams cream cheese, softened

1 egg

75 grams caster sugar

Zest of 1/2 a lemon

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

175 grams sour cream

Method

Preheat the oven to 160C. Spray the inside of an 18-cm springform tin with oil spray (or brush lightly with extra melted butter) and line the base and sides. Cover the outside of the tin with a layer of clingfilm and then foil. (Double layer if you're worried about leakage).

Crush the biscuits in a food processor. Add the melted butter and cinnamon and whizz to combine. Press the mixture into the base of the prepared tin. Refrigerate while you make the filling.

Place the cream cheese in the bowl of a mixer, or a (clean) food processor. Beat until smooth.

Add the egg and caster sugar and beat until smooth.

Add the lemon zest, vanilla extract and sour cream, and beat until smooth.

Place the prepared cake tin into a larger roasting tin. Pour the cream cheese mixture into the tin. Pour hot water from a recently-boiled kettle into the roasting tin, so that it comes approximately halfway up the side of the tin.

Place in the oven, and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the cheesecake is just set - jiggly but not with obvious liquid underneath.

Remove the cheesecake from the water bath. Gently remove the foil and clingfilm, and place the cheesecake on a rack to cool completely. Chill until completely cold.

Makes 1 x 18cm cheesecake.

Serves 2-4

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog