I rarely make desserts, but I wanted to give tiramisu a try. As I began the research process I was already a bit overwhelmed because there are literally hundreds of variations and recipes out there. I looked through A LOT of recipes and decided to go with two recipes that were fairly similar. One was from Giada De Laurentiis and the other one I found somewhere else on the internet (?). I integrated the second recipe because it was very similar to Giada’s (which I already had all the ingredients for and there was 30 inches of snow on the ground) and because it directed me to cook the egg yolks, which Giada did not. I was bringing this tiramisu to a Superbowl party and I did not want to make anyone sick, so I decided to combine the recipes to make sure I cooked the eggs properly.
It all started off ok…
I first separated the egg yolks from the whites.
Next I added the sugar.
Then it was time to beat. According to Giada I could have just mixed this for five minutes and then integrated the marscapone. As I mentioned though, I had some reservations about serving uncooked eggs to the masses so I mixed for five minutes and then continued to beat the mixture over a double boiler (as suggested in many recipes I read).
Since this process heated (cooked?) the egg/sugar mixture, I placed it in the fridge to cool before I beat in the marscapone cheese. I took this time to set up the other ingredients. In all of my recipe digging, I learned that it was very important to use authentic ingredients, including savoiardi lady fingers, marscapone, and Italian espresso.I never used marscapone before and it’s American equivalent is supposedly cream cheese. I found the texture to be way more gooey than cream cheese, but many recipes say you can substitute for it.
Once the eggs were cooled, I mixed in the marscapone cheese.
This mixture was not only the filling, but also the topping. It tasted really good, but as you can see the texture is not right. It’s not fluffy enough. Many other recipes integrated whipped cream at this point and now I know why. I didn’t have any whipping cream so I just went with what I had (and what the recipes I had told me to do). I poured it over a layer of espresso/rum soaked lady fingers with hopes that maybe the cheese filling would fluff up in the fridge.
Repeat.
I refrigerated it for a couple of hours, but it didn’t fluff up at all 😦 I was pretty dismayed because it doesn’t look like tiramisu, or at least what I am used to seeing. I went ahead and added the chocolate powder (and later added shavings) anyway and continued to refrigerate it, hoping, hoping, hoping, but to no avail. This is what it ended up looking like.
It ended up tasting ok, but the texture was off and obviously it didn’t look right either. I learned a lot from this initial effort though and next time I make it I will definitely work off of a recipe that includes whipped cream or egg whites, or something to fluff it up! I bought too many lady fingers, so the next attempt may be sooner than later. I will keep you posted!
Starving Kitten 