Italy: Tiramisu

I have difficulty picking a favorite experience from our trip to Italy, but it’s not difficult to choose the most beautiful spot. Italy has no shortage of stunning sights, both natural and humanmade . . .

Cinque Terre

Dolomites

Florence

. . . but to my mind, none comes close to the splendor of Lake Como. To illustrate the point, I’ll cop to this embarrassing display: when we had to leave early due to a train strike, I wept.

Another thing about our time roaming the boot that still brings tears to my eyes? I didn’t eat tiramisu there. Not once. Che idiota!

I’ll admit, I’m taking a bit of a liberty including tiramisu in the Travel-Inspired Baking section of this blog. You see, tiramisu isn’t baked. But never fear, I checked with the blog boss—me—and I gave myself permission to proceed.

Tiramisu

Recipe Adapted From: www.tastesbetterfromscratch.com

Level of Difficulty: low—probably the easiest dessert I’ve ever made

Time Consumption: low—probably the quickest dessert I’ve ever made

Kitchen Destruction: low

Wow Factor: medium . . . and yet, now that I think about it, this dessert was devoured more quickly than any other at our Travel Bucket List Party & Fundraiser, so maybe high?

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 C heavy whipping cream
• 8 ounce container mascarpone cheese, room temperature
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 C cold espresso
• 3 TBS coffee flavored liqueur, such as Kahlua (optional)
• 1 package lady fingers
• cocoa powder for dusting the top

Coffee and Kahlua – a match made in heaven.

Directions:

1. Add whipping cream to a mixing bowl and beat on medium speed with electric mixers (or use a stand mixer). Slowly add sugar and vanilla and continue to beat to stiff peaks. Add mascarpone cheese and mix just until combined. Set aside.

No raw eggs, so lick away.

2. Add coffee and liqueur to a shallow bowl. Dip the lady fingers in the coffee (Don’t soak them–just quickly dip them on both sides to get them wet) and lay them in a single layer on the bottom of an 8×8″ (or 9×13″—see Note #1) pan.

Dunk nimbly. If you oversoak the lady fingers in the coffee mixture, they’ll disintegrate.

3. Smooth half of the mascarpone mixture over the top. Add another layer of coffee-dipped lady fingers. Smooth remaining mascarpone cream over the top.

Cut the lady fingers as needed to make them fit

1.Using a fine mesh strainer, dust cocoa powder generously over the top.* Refrigerate for at least 3-4 hours or up to overnight before serving.

*If freezing, make tiramisu through step 3 and don’t dust with cocoa powder. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and then tinfoil and freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw in the refrigerator overnight and dust with cocoa powder a few hours before serving. 

From the Travel Bucket List Party & Fundraiser – not the neatest looking pieces, but they went faster than any other dessert

Confessions of an Imperfect Baker Tiramisu Assembler: I didn’t realize this recipe called for an 8×8″ until I was writing this post up (*headslap*), but it still worked well in the 9×13″ pan I used. The only difference, I can confidently assume, is that the mascarpone layers would be thicker in an 8×8 pan.

Note #1: I bought a package that contained 48 lady fingers measuring approximately 1″ by 4″ each and, using the 9×13″ pan, had eight lady fingers left over.

Note #2: Many tiramisu recipes call for raw eggs in the mascarpone cream.  The lack of that ingredient is one of the reasons I chose this recipe. My tiramisu was going to be sitting out at our party for a while and, caring host that I am, I didn’t want to risk any of our guests hurling all over my house getting food poisoning.

Note #3: The only reason I lined the pan with tinfoil is that I needed to freeze it and, once frozen, I was easily able to lift the tiramisu out of the pan using the tinfoil and transfer it to a container I was willing to part with for several weeks.