Cassata Siciliana

Cassata is a shallow domed cake built in concentric layers. A sloped mould is lined with alternating strips of liqueur-soaked sponge and green marzipan, filled with sieved sheep's-milk ricotta sweetened and folded with dark chocolate chips, sealed with a lid of sponge, chilled, then turned out, coated in a white sugar glaze and decorated with whole candied fruit.

Every layer does a job. The sponge carries the syrup and holds the shape; the marzipan insulates and adds almond; the ricotta supplies the cool, fatty centre; the glaze seals the cake and extends its life; the candied fruit provides the final sugar hit and the visual signature. Remove any one and you have made something else.

There is also cassata al forno: a baked version with a shortcrust pastry shell instead of sponge, no marzipan and no glaze. That is the everyday Sicilian home version. The glazed, decorated one is the pastry-shop showpiece, and it is what people mean when they say cassata without qualification.

Be aware that 'cassata' in Britain and much of northern Europe often means an ice cream: layered vanilla, pistachio and strawberry studded with candied peel. That is cassata gelata, a real but entirely separate Italian dessert.

Sweet, and unapologetic about it. The first impression is sugar (the glaze is essentially a thin sheet of set icing) followed immediately by cool, slightly tangy ricotta. Sheep's-milk ricotta is the thing that keeps it from being cloying: it has a faint lactic sharpness and a mineral note that cow's-milk ricotta lacks entirely.

Underneath, the marzipan brings bitter almond and the sponge brings whatever the pastry chef used for the syrup, usually maraschino or a rosolio, sometimes just orange syrup. Chocolate chips give bursts of bitterness through the cream. The candied citron and orange on top are chewy and floral rather than sugary-hard, if they have been made properly.

Texturally it is soft all the way through, with three distinct softnesses: the yielding glaze, the dense cool cream, the damp sponge. There is no crunch anywhere, which is deliberate. Portions are small for a reason: a hundred-gram slice is a full dessert.

Cassata is not cooked, it is served, and serving it badly ruins it. Take it out of the fridge twenty minutes before cutting. Straight from the cold, the ricotta is mute and the marzipan is hard; at around 16°C both open up.

Cut with a smooth-bladed knife dipped in hot water and wiped dry between slices. A serrated knife drags the glaze across the cut face and smears the layers.

Keep portions small. A hundred grams is a generous dessert, and Sicilian pastry shops sell single-portion cassatine for exactly this reason. If you are serving it after a long meal, a fifty-gram sliver with an espresso is the right measure.

If you are building one, the ricotta is the whole job. Sheep's-milk ricotta, drained overnight, beaten with about 300 g of sugar per kilo and passed through a fine sieve twice: twice is not a flourish, it is what makes the cream silk rather than grainy. Fold in dark chocolate chips at the very end so they do not bleed.

Assemble, chill for at least six hours, then unmould, glaze and decorate. Decorate last and serve within a day: candied fruit sitting on glaze slowly weeps.

Cassata is a refrigerated dessert with a short working life and Sicilian pastry shops assemble it close to the day it is sold. Keep it at 4 C, uncovered or under a dome rather than wrapped, since cling film pressed on the icing lifts it away in patches. Anything bought boxed carries a date from the pasticceria or the producer, and that is the reference. Over two or three days in the fridge the parts move at different speeds: the ricotta slowly releases whey into the sponge, which darkens and softens where it sits, the marzipan band dries at the exposed edge and can crack, and the glaze loses its gloss.

Temperature swings show immediately. Taken from the fridge into a warm room the sugar glaze draws condensation and goes tacky, so bring it out twenty minutes before serving and no longer. Freezing is not how this one is kept: at minus 18 C the ricotta separates and thaws grainy and watery, and the icing goes matte and crazed. Cut portions with a hot dry blade and return the rest to the cold.

A Sicilian cassata is built in visible layers and you can read them from the side: a band of pale green marzipan standing upright around the rim, a mirror-smooth white sugar glaze across the top, whole candied fruit laid on it, and beneath all that a thin sponge shell holding sweetened ricotta studded with chocolate. The ricotta should be sheep's milk, sieved to a dense paste that holds a clean edge when cut, not whipped, not cream, not mascarpone. A slice that oozes rather than standing up was made with something else.

Outside Sicily the name has been borrowed twice over. In American and Australian shops cassata usually means a moulded ice cream brick in coloured stripes, closer to spumone, sold frozen. Ricotta cheesecake is a different construction entirely, baked and without marzipan. Cassata al forno is a genuine Sicilian variant but a baked shortcrust pie, without the glaze or the green band. Marzipan and candied citron are expensive, so a real one is sold by weight from a pasticceria at a price well above a supermarket cake.

In the US, Sicilian-American bakeries in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and New Orleans make cassata around Easter, often to order, so call two weeks ahead. Expect 45 to 70 dollars for a cake serving eight to ten. Italian specialty importers ship shelf-stable versions, which are a compromise: the glaze survives shipping, the ricotta does not.

For ingredients: sheep's-milk ricotta is sold by some Greek and Middle Eastern grocers as well as Italian ones; almond paste is stocked by most good baking suppliers; candied citron is the hard one, and worth ordering from an Italian importer rather than buying supermarket mixed peel, which is bitter and dry.

In the UK, Italian delicatessens in London and Manchester take Easter orders, typically 35 to 60 pounds for a whole cake. Sheep's-milk ricotta is scarce; drained cow's ricotta plus a spoonful of fresh goat's cheese is the practical workaround. Good candied fruit runs 20 to 35 pounds per kilo and is worth every penny against the neon supermarket version.

Beware of anything sold as cassata in a freezer aisle: in Britain that almost always means the ice cream, not the cake.

Palermo. The pastry shops of the historic centre keep cassata in the window year-round, and the ones worth stopping at say ricotta di pecora on the label and offer several sizes, which means they actually make it rather than buying it in.

Piana degli Albanesi, twenty kilometres south of Palermo, is a sheep's-milk town founded by Albanian refugees in the fifteenth century. Its ricotta is the raw material for much of the province's pastry, and its cassate and cannoli are a pilgrimage.

Catania and the Val di Noto have their own hand: a lighter, more citrus-forward syrup. Around Trapani and up in Erice, convent pastry survives and the cassate are smaller and less ornately decorated.

Go at Easter if you can choose. That is when every pastry shop puts its best version in the window, when the candied fruit is freshest, and when zuccata, the candied squash that most producers have quietly abandoned, actually turns up.