Raspberry ricotta cake

Baking has been one of my passions for as long as I can remember and whenever I host an event I always bake something - muffins, cakes or biscuits. It is quite easy to come up with ideas when it is just few friends who are coming over, however, when it will be more than 10 people it gets a bit more tricky. Usually, most cakes serve around 10-12 slices and I rarely have the time to make more than one. Also, muffin trays only have 12 holes and therefore until now I've been stuck with making several batches to make sure there's plenty of food for everyone.

This weekend we had a nice get-together in our flat. At first we were supposed to go out and have a nice picnic in the park, but weather was typically British and therefore we had no choice but to stay indoors. When deciding what to make, I wanted to make sure that I would not have to slave in the kitchen for hours and that one batch would be enough for everyone, I got a really clever idea - I should bake a cake in a way they are made back in Estonia. So, instead of messing about with a  round cake tin I decided to make a nice and big cake in the baking tray. The result was delicious - ricotta gave the cake the required freshness and a bit sour raspberries balanced out the sweet crust. Will definitely make this again during summer!

Ingredients
(Serves 1 large baking tray)
Base:
- 400g butter, at room temperature
- 2 dl sugar
- 2 eggs
- 12 dl white flour

Filling:
- 2 dl sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla sugar
- 5 eggs
- 800g ricotta cheese
- 2 dl sour cream
- 2 dl raspberries

Directions
Heat the oven to 200C. For the base, mix together butter and sugar. Then add eggs and flour and mix until the dough is smooth. Put 3/4 of the dough on a baking paper lined large baking tray and even it out, so that it cover whole of the tray.

For the filling, whisk the eggs together with sugar. Add ricotta and sour cream and mix until smooth. Pour the mixture on top of the dough, sprinkle over with raspberries and top it off with crumbs of the remaining 1/4 of the dough. Cook for 30 minutes or until ready.

Serve either hot from the oven or let it cool down and chill it in the fridge and serve cold.

Pictures taken by my dear friend K.