Tiramisu is a layered dessert of ladyfingers soaked in espresso and a mixture of creams and mascarpone cheese. For the challenge we had to make the whole thing. Mascarpone, biscuits, 3 kinds of cream. Everything. I'll tell you about them in the order I made them.
First, I made mascarpone (which is basically cream cheese without the tang). To most people, this seems like an impossible task, but it was surprisingly easy and I will surely do it again soon.
You need 2 cups of heavy whipping cream. The recipe said not to use ultra-pasteurized but I did and it turned out fine. If you can get your hands on fresh, organic, pasteurized cream, use it. In fact, use the freshest and most natural ingredients you can find.
Anyway, in a double boiler/ skillet of water+stainless steel bowl, heat the cream to 190° or until little bubbles just start to come to the surface. They say it should take about 15 minutes. The most important part here is that you stir gently the whole time so that a film doesn't form on top making lumpy cheese. That would be gross. Personally, I stood over the hot cream for 30 minutes as my candy thermometer read 160°.
Finally, I gave up and went on to the next step. Add 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon or lime juice and stir until the cream thickens (this is like curdling without the lumps). Take the bowl off of the stove and let it cool while you set up a mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth over a bowl.
Once cool, pour the cream into the bowl and resist the urge to push it through the strainer with a spoon. Instead, put it in the fridge overnight to let it drain. In the morning, voila! Mascarpone!
Next were the savoiardi biscuits (a.k.a. ladyfingers). I kinda have a problem calling them lady fingers because some of them really looked like fingers and it weirded me out. But the recipe is really good. It is very similar to macaron batter in the respect that the only liquid comes from eggs. Separate 3 eggs and whip the whites as if you were making meringue of some sort. Add 6 tablespoons of granulated sugar 1 at a time and beat until you get shiny stiff peaks. Break the egg yolks and pour them over the whites. Sift 3/4 cup cake flour over the eggs and mix extremely gently. Don't even mix. Fold. These cookies are known for being light and you do not want to deflate them.
See how fluffy the batter is?
Then put the batter into a piping bag and pipe into "finger" shapes on one or two prepared baking sheets. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of icing sugar over the cookies and let the sugar moisten. It should look shiny like this after a few minutes.
Then sprinkle another 3 tablespoons of icing sugar on them. This is a lot of sugar.
Tap off as much excess as you can then bake them in a 375° oven for 15 minutes or until they puff up and brown slightly. Let them cool on a rack for a few minutes then save them in an airtight container.
The original recipes can be found here. I am not going to give you the recipes for sabayon and pastry cream here, I will just share my experiences. I made the creams the night before I served the tiramisu. The sabayon/zabaglione is supposed to be flavored with port (making it comically purple). My first batch was pretty alcoholic, so I made one flavored with coffee instead. In the end I used a mixture of the two.
The vanilla pastry cream is pretty straightforward. The only difficult part is stirring so that there are no lumps. That is pretty much the theme of this recipe.
After making 3 batches of creams, I had lots of egg whites leftover (perfect for macarons!)
So if you don't know what do do with your leftover yolks, make some classy pudding!
Later, you mix the mascarpone, pastry cream, sabayon, and whipped cream to make the cream.
Lightly dip the cookies in a mixture of espresso (or just strong coffee) and sugar and line the serving dish with them. Layer cream on cookies on cream on cookies as much as you have room and materials for, ending on a cream layer for the top. Dust on some cocoa and serve! You may want to chill it a while before serving.
Look at those layers!
This was for my sister's birthday.
Obviously, it was a hit.
You really should try this. As time consuming as it was, the concepts were not especially difficult and it was just so impressive.
Come on, I dare you.
xoxo,
allie
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