This soft, whey‑born staple slips effortlessly from savoury suppers to indulgent celebratory desserts while keeping its cool, milky charm

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My record for making ricotta and lemon ring cake is three minutes and 42 seconds. That doesn’t include heating the oven or baking, or finding a recipe, which is in my head. It does include getting out the utensils (bowl, spatula, grater, scale, ring tin) and the ingredients (ricotta, olive oil, flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, lemons), then speed-mixing everything in one bowl, scraping the batter into the tin and getting the tin in the oven via a discus throw. The timer is stopped as the oven door is closed. This is not relaxing cooking, it is entertaining cooking. And it is gratifying, having proved my partner wrong when he said it would take me at least five minutes.

I was disappointed, then, to find myself on terrible form the other day, when a chocolate-chip version of the same ring cake took me five minutes and 19 seconds. In my defence, I had difficulty getting the glass bowl out of an impractical stack, and we had run out of chocolate chips, which meant I had to find a knife and chop up a bar instead. Even so, it was an absymal performance. There was some consolation in the cake itself, which is not only the quickest, but one of the best cakes I know. The ricotta adds creamy depth and the olive oil provides fat, and together they make for a tender, moist, everyday cake that is best eaten warm, when the bits of chocolate are still hot enough to be little pools.