Traditionally served at Easter and my favorite Italian dessert! This recipe is a wonderful custard like pie with no crust. To make it easier I boil the noodles (break them up into pieces about 1 inch in length before cooking), drain and put them back in the hot pot with 1/4 c. butter (I cut back from the noted 1/2 c.) and stir till the butter is melted and has coated all the noodles. Then I turn the noodles into the baking pan. I mix the ricotta (which is 1 cup) with the sugar, eggs and vanilla till mixed well then add the milk and cream. I do not use the anise. Pour the liquid over the noodles and bake. I always have some liquid left. The pan is filled to the top making it impossible to fill on the counter and carry to the oven so fill the pan (use a sturdy pan) enough then place in oven on rack and finish filling there. Chill well (overnight is best) before serving. Delicious cold with a sprinkle of cinnamon!!!
I've made this on the holidays for family dinners. Since I dont care much for anise flavor i substituted by using cinnamon extract it turned out AMAZING!
instead of holiday cookies my mother would always make Pastia for Christmas. she has been gone now for almost 15 years and her last Christmas with us we had talked about passing down the recipe but she would say "there is no recipe I throw a little bit of this and a little bit of that in there". this is the ONLY recipe I was able to find online and because my mother only called it noodle cake I never even knew the proper name of the recipe to do a better search. I don't care for the anise and I doubt that my mother has ever used it as well because this recipe taste just like she used to make minus the anise. It brought back many tears and great memories the first time I duplicated this recipe. THANK YOU!
This recipe was easy to make and tasted great! The only problem was that it did not cook in the time suggested by the recipe. It was still completely raw and jiggly. I had to add another 20 minutes of cooking time. I don't know if it was my oven or not. I made sure it was preheated but it still took nearly two hours.
We called this spaghetti cake. Our version is a little different. 3/4 pound of capellini #15 broken up
12 whole eggs
2 Oz. Lemon extract
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 pound ricotta
Optional small container citron chopped
Boil spaghetti and drain well. Mix all other ingredients well , add to spaghetti, and mix well. Pour into greased tube pan.
Bake at 325 for 1:30
While hot, loosen around edges and center edge with spatula. Shake. Cool 15 min. Invert on dinner plate, then invert again.
Very similar but no butter , milk, or cream.
Made this with almond milk cause my son is allergic to milk. Turned out great. Be sure to mix all the other ingredients before adding the noodles. Had to bake it an extra hour to get it to firm up possibly because I baked it in a stoneware dish. But it turned out awesome.
I made this today. I used my pampered chef pan. It took well over 2 hours to bake. I think next time the oven will be in 325 degrees. Hubby said it tastes delicious.
Traditionally served at Easter and my favorite Italian dessert! This recipe is a wonderful custard like pie with no crust. To make it easier I boil the noodles (break them up into pieces about 1 inch in length before cooking) drain and put them back in the hot pot with 1/4 c. butter (I cut back from the noted 1/2 c.) and stir till the butter is melted and has coated all the noodles. Then I turn the noodles into the baking pan. I mix the ricotta (which is 1 cup) with the sugar eggs and vanilla till mixed well then add the milk and cream. I do not use the anise. Pour the liquid over the noodles and bake. I always have some liquid left. The pan is filled to the top making it impossible to fill on the counter and carry to the oven so fill the pan (use a sturdy pan) enough then place in oven on rack and finish filling there. Chill well (overnight is best) before serving. Delicious cold with a sprinkle of cinnamon!!!
