It had been a few days since I had been asked to make a cake with ricotta cheese. After a few days, I decided to make a ricotta and chocolate cake. To make this delicious tart, I used orange flavoured shortcrust pastry, both zest and essence. I used sheep’s milk ricotta and chocolate nuggets, which I think are better than chips.

However, the focus of this recipe is not so much the cake, but the recipe for using leftover shortcrust pastry. How often have we had leftover shortcrust pastry after making a cake? Personally, I have often made small biscuits or tarts, but this time I tried something new: a mini Nutella roll made with shortcrust pastry.

I had never made this recipe before, but it turned out spectacular. I think it is the best shortcrust recipe I have ever tried. We can fill it with anything we like, such as hazelnut cream, jam or Nutella, as in this case, in short, anything spreadable.

RECIPE SUGGESTIONS

If you don’t have enough room in your fridge, I recommend that you leave the rolled out shortcrust pastry to rest. Alternatively, you can use the traditional method of rolling the shortcrust into a ball. I do not recommend melting the Nutella in a bain-marie as this will make it too soft and difficult to roll out. It is better to spread the Nutella as it is so that it can be rolled out more easily. Personally, when I made the Nutella shortbread roll, I used a pumcake tin to hold the shape.

Servings: 7 servings Prep time: 10minutes Cooking time 45minutes

Ingredients

• 500g ’00’ flour
• 250g Butter
• 60g Whole eggs
• 40g Eggs (Yolks)
• 200g Sugar
• Orange zest
• Nutella

Directions

• Place the flour and softened butter in the bowl of a food processor.
• Mix at medium speed until you have a sandy mixture.
• Pour the whole eggs, yolks, sugar and orange zest into a bowl and mix until the mixture is homogeneous.
• Pour the mixture into the planetary mixer and whirl until all the ingredients are well mixed.
• Pour the mixture onto the workbench and, after compacting, roll out the pastry on a large piece of baking paper to a thickness of about 1cm.
• Leave to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
• Take out the short pastry, spread it with the Nutella and roll it up with the baking paper until you reach the end.
• Place the roll in the tin and bake at 175 degrees in a ventilated oven for at least 45 minutes (I recommend checking after half an hour).
• Now all you have to do is take it out of the oven and enjoy it with your friends.

Notes

• You can replace the Nutella with any spreadable cream, jam or marmalade.