Recipe with ricotta cheese, fresh fruit and ladyfingers – A dessert in a cup

Ricotta cheese has a wide purpose because of its neutral taste. You can eat ricotta cheese with scrambled eggs, add it to your phyllo dough pies, spread it on a french toast, make ricotta gnocchi or ricotta pancakes and so on. It also goes well with fruit so if you are searching for a quick and easy dessert recipe with ricotta cheese, you can try this ladyfinger dessert with fresh fruit and ricotta.

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How to make dessert with ricotta cheese

INGREDIENTS FOR TWO SERVINGS

• 250 g ricotta cheese
• 3 tbsp caster sugar
• ½ of orange, freshly squeezed juice
• 6 ladyfingers 
• 6 or more fresh strawberries

PREPARATION

1. Squeeze one half of orange and soak ladyfingers in it for no more than 30 seconds. Ladyfingers should be softened but not too much because they will soften even more when you refrigerate the dessert.
2. Mix caster sugar with ricotta cheese and stir well so it gets the creamy texture.
3. Cut fresh strawberries into halves.
4. At the bottom of a glass container, put two lady fingers, then half of the ricotta cheese. If the glass container is not wide enough, split ladyfingers in halves so they fit the bottom of the glass. When you pour the ricotta cheese mixture, add one more lady finger cut in halves and 6 halves of fresh strawberries. 
5. Repeat everything for the second glass container. Refrigerate for at least 30 min before eating.

Substitute for ricotta cheese

Instead of ricotta cheese, you can use mascarpone, or any other cream cheese. If you want to make a dessert that is low in calories, ricotta is a better option than cream cheese because it is lower in fat. There are many other substitutes for ricotta cheese, but you cannot use them on every type of dish. When it comes to desserts, mascarpone and cream cheese are the best substitute for ricotta. 

Substitute for ladyfingers

If you cannot find ladyfingers, you can use Margherite cookies, which is an American version of ladyfingers. For this dessert recipe with ricotta cheese, you can also use any type of dried soft biscuits, sponge cake, crumbled cookies. If you like chocolate, you can even replace ladyfingers with chocolate cookies, like Oreos, crumble them at the bottom and add other ingredients from this recipe. 

Other ways to make this recipe with ricotta cheese

What I like about this dessert is that you can make it differently every other time. Here are some combinations to try and experiment:

Use any type of fresh fruit. Instead of strawberries, you can use raspberries, cherries, blueberries, bananas, peaches, apricots. As a matter of fact, you can use any fresh fruit that you like or even a mix of various fruits.

Replace orange juice with lemon juice, any red fruit juice, milk, or even instant coffee for tiramisu-like dessert.

Want a healthier dessert? Instead of caster sugar, add honey or any sugar alternative.

Ricotta dessert – Storage tips

You can keep this ricotta dessert in the fridge for up to 24 hours. It can be kept longer if you don’t assemble all the ingredients immediately. You can mix ricotta with caster sugar ahead, and even squeeze the orange. When you want to serve the dessert, just place the ingredients accordingly.