In my kitchen - Crostata di Ricotta

Sunday was a rainy day, and I found myself home alone since husband was at work. So I decided to use up a tub of ricotta cheese to make a ricotta crostata, since husband had been asking for one for months!
This is my variation on the classic recipe, and came out pretty good.

For the base I used Pasta Frolla. I took the recipe from a book husband had at home since before we met, and made half of it:
The ingredients are:

• 250g flour
• 2 egg yolks
• 150g butter, kept at room temperature
• 100g white sugar
• lemon rind, grated

First I mixed butter and flour with my hands. Then I put the mixture on a wooden table (kind gift from Nana Iole to encourage me to make bread, pizza and cakes) and added the sugar, egg yolks an lemon rind. I made it into a pretty solid dough - it's soft but holds its shape. Put it in a covered container (to avoid drying) and left it in the fridge. It should stay in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. After that I flattened the dough and put it in a pie pan coated with butter and flour. I made some holes in the base with a fork ribs, and put it back in the refrigerator

The filling ingredients were:

• 250g ricotta cheese
• 100 g white sugar
• cinnamon to taste (used A LOT!)
• two egg whites

First I mixed the ricotta cheese with cinnamon and sugar, then added the whipped egg whites. Then spread it over the crostata base, and put it in the pre-heated oven at 180 °C. I left it for 30 minutes at 180°C, then took it out of the oven and let it cool.

The leftover pasta frolla (you'll have some) can be freezed and used to make a smaller pie base (try it with cherry or apricoat jelly) ot cut to make cookies.