Wacky waffle cake bowl with ricotta cheese topping

In trying to decide how to use the waffle bowls we made a few days ago, my wife was inspired by two items. The first was the realization that there are several Pennsylvania Dutch desserts such as funny cake or shoofly pie  that are essentially cakes in a pie shell. In addition she thought of Japanese melon pan which is essentially a cakey bread covered in a cookie (and wasn’t the waffle bowl a kind of cookie?) So based on these inspirations, she decided, as an experiment, to fill several of the waffle bowls with a PA Dutch cake called Wacky cake topped with ricotta filling. She chose wacky cake because it is so simple to make. If the experiment didn’t turn out, it wouldn’t be a great loss. In fact the “experiment” turned out quite nicely. The picture shows a whole wacky waffle cake plus one cut in half to show how the ricotta filling dips into the cake as it cooks.

The waffle bowls were cooked again and got really brown and crispy. Then after some time, stored in the refrigerator they became a bit soft again. My wife  heated them up in the toaster oven just before serving which made the bowls crispy. I turn the platform over to my wife to describe how she made them.

Ingredients:

For the cake 

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tbs. vinegar
1/3 cup oil
1 cup water 

For the ricotta filling

1 cup ricotta cheese
1 egg 
1/8 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp vanilla

Directions:
Mix all the ingredients for the ricotta filling until smooth and set aside. Mix the dry ingredients from the flour thru the cocoa powder in a bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in another bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients until smooth. I put the waffle bowls in a tin for large muffins to provide support as the cake cooked (and in case the waffle bowls fell apart during cooking the mess would be contained.) I then filled them with the cake mixture and topped them with a scoop of the ricotta filling. (These are shown in the bottom row of muffins in the next picture). I had some batter left over after filling the waffle bowls so I just made some large muffins by putting the batter directly into the muffin tin and topping them with the ricotta mixture. (These muffins are shown in the top row of muffins in the picture). I cooked them at 350 degree for about 30 to 35 minutes until the ricotta topping firmed up and a skewer came out clean. 

The wacky waffle cakes were surprisingly good. Even though the shell was double cooked and got a bit high done it was nice and crispy and tasted very good. The combination of cookie-like crispiness, soft sweet chocolate cake and smooth moist ricotta filling made each chew a nice complex texture experience. The three different flavors of each element also went very well together. I think I may be onto something here. Stand back!