Cottage cheese ( ricotta) crumbcake

I was tempted not to post this one. For we use hungarian "túró" in it, which is similar to cottage cheese, but not the same. Anyway, i thought the result would be also nice with ricotta (especially if you put lemon or orange zest in it) so i changed my mind.
If you can lay your hand on some fresh eastern european "cottage cheese" try that version. It is sour a bit, giving a nice contrast to the chocolate.

Ingredients:
pastry:
400 g all-purpose flour
150 g sugar
250 g ice cold butter
1 egg yolk (save the white)
4 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
a pinch of salt

filling:
500 g cottage cheese or ricotta
2 eggs
125 g sugar
grated zest of 2 lemon or orange (you may put more according to your taste)

Preheat oven to 200 celsius degree.

Mix the ingredients of the pastry until you can form a ball. Put it in the fridge.
Mix the sugar with the egg yolks until pale and fluffy. Stir in the zest and the cottage cheese or ricotta. Whip the egg whites (all 3 of them) and combine with the cheese mixture.

Put baking paper in a smaller baking dish (i used an 18×25 cm one) and crumble half of the pasty in it. Layer the filling on it. Crumble the other half of the pastry on top.

Bake 40 minutes.

Ricotta chives dinner rolls

These dinner rolls are excellent with a salad or to make sandwiches also. This was my entry for the "Ready! Steady! Cook!" hungarian food blog event hosted by Izbolygó this time. She asked for recipes with cottage cheese, ricotta, quark, bryndza. I had a lot of ideas first, but unfortunately had no time and energy to complete them. I came up with these simple rolls finally, which my family liked a lot.
Ingredients:
60 ml milk lukewarm
1 package active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
45 g butter at room temperature
250 g ricotta
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup snipped fresh chives
300-400 g bread flour

1 egg+2 teaspoons water for eggwash (optional)

1. Pour the milk into a large bowl and stir in the yeast and sugar. Let stand until foamy (5 minutes)
2. Beat the butter, ricotta, eggs, salt, chives and pepper into the yeast mixture with a whisk.
3. Stir in enough of the flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, to make a soft, but not sticky dough.
4. Knead 10 minutes.
5.Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise antil doubled in bulk, 1 to 2 hours.
6. Punch the dough down and divide into 8 equal pieces. Shape them into rolls.
7. Put semolina flour in a baking tray and put the rolls on it.
8. Cover and let them rise an hour again.
9. Preheat oven to 350F.
10. With a scissor you can decorate your rolls or brush the top of them with egg wash.
11. Bake until they are nicely browned, about 45-50 minutes.
12. Turn them onto a wire rack to cool.