Chocolate Ricotta Icebox Cake

I hope you all had a good Valentine's Day. Did you get flowers or chocolates or kisses? Any of which would be good on any day really!!

I made this dessert to celebrate the occasion.

We don’t really do much around here for Valentine's day but I thought it was a good excuse to make this amazing cake.

Ingredients:

 Nonstick cooking spray

14 ounces of semisweet chocolate (do not use chips)

2 containers (15oz each) part skim ricotta cheese, room temperature

¾ cup heavy cream

1 package (9oz) chocolate wafers (about 44 cookies)

First prepare the pan. Remove sides from a 9-inch round springform pan. Place a sheet of waxed paper over the bottom, leaving an overhang; lock sides onto bottom, firmly securing paper. Spray inside of pan with cooking spray. Line the sides with a strip of waxed paper.

Make the chocolate ricotta mixture. Break 12 oz of chocolate into a double boiler. Cook stirring occasionally until chocolate is melted. 5-7mins.

In a food processor, blend ricotta until smooth. About 1 minute. Scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add the melted chocolate and blend until smooth. In a large bowl beat cream until stiff peaks form. With a rubber spatula, gently fold into the chocolate-ricotta mixture.

Assemble cake: arrange half of the cookies in an overlapping pattern to cover the bottom of pan. Spoon half the chocolate-ricotta mixture on top of cookies, smooth the top. Cover with remaining cookies, top with remaining chocolate mixture and smooth top. Cover with plastic wrap, refrigerate at least 6 hours up to 2 days.

Before serving, release sides of pan and remove waxed paper from sides. Using bottom piece of waxed paper pull cake onto a platter. With a metal spatula life cake and remove wax paper. Using a vegetable peeler shave remaining 2 oz of chocolate over cake. With a knife dipped in hot water, cut cake into 10 slices. Wipe off knife and dip in hot water after each slice.

My Valentine loved this dessert!
It was quite simple and it tastes like you spent hours making it!
Which is what we want right, to make people think we slaved all day in the kitchen!
It took me half an hour to put it together I spent the rest of the afternoon watching PVR'd episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Parenthood, which made me very happy!

Jen