You know those well guarded, grandma’s secret family recipes that some people never share, just because they’re so special?
Quick tip: If you make a mess on your glass cooktop, have a look at my diy home made cleaning method on how to clean a glass top stove using baking soda.
Well, today I’m sharing one of mine. It’s for the very simple, melt-in-your-mouth Italian Tiramisu. It’s not my grandmother’s or anything, It’s actually my sister’s, one that she adapted from some other good tiramisu recipes. Shhh!
When I once talked about the few dishes I DO know how to make, this recipe was one of the ones in particular that I was talking about. If you do decide to make this and you are bringing it to a party, be sure to pack copies of the recipes on hand – you WILL be asked!
Anyways – ’nuff about that, let’s get into some important details about the ingredients. I’m not gonna lie, this is expensive to make, but well worth it!
So here’s what you need:
- 5 egg yolks
- 5 tablespoons of granulated sugar
- 2 (250 g) small containers of mascarpone or 1 large (500g) container
- 1 pint of 35% whipping cream
- 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa
- 1 pot of brewed coffee or espresso
- (2) 1/3 cup chocolatey liqueur portions (Can be: Tia Maria, Kahlua, Bailey’s Irish Cream, etc..)
- 2 (1oz) squares of semi-sweet baking chocolate
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla
- 1 springform pan
These are the 2 most expensive AND most important:
1. Lady Finger cookies, also known as Savoiardi cookies. Difficult to find, but not impossible, be prepared to visit 2 or 3 stores before you finally find them. Depending on where you go and what brand you find, they can run anywhere from 3 to 6 dollars a package. They would likely be in the ethnic section of the grocery store with the rest of the italian / asian and latin stuff. If you strike out, try a grocer with more of a gourmet selection. I usually get mine at World Market or Central Market. But if all else fails, you can also buy them on amazon here. I used nearly 75 cookies in this recipe, which amounts to about 3 packages of these.
Even if you buy too many – these are awesome dipped in coffee and consumed as is!! YUM!
2. Mascarpone cheese. This is something you can find alot more easily – infact I’ve seen Wal-Mart carry it. Look where they keep the fancy cheeses and you’ll surely see it. Again, another expensive one.. I think I paid almost 12$ for these two little guys!
Ok so now you got all the ingredients, here’s how you put it together. Start by beating the 5 egg yolks with the 5 tablespoons of sugar. Beat till it is thick and pale yellow.
Add in the mascarpone, one of the chocolate liqueur portions and vanilla. Keep beating till it is nice and fluffy
Transfer to another bowl and set it aside. Now for the whipped cream.. pour the entire pint into your mixing bowl and whip it up!
Mmmmm Yum!
Now it’s all about folding the two mixtures together. Carefully mix the two together by folding with a spatula.
You should have something that looks like this now:
Now you gotta make the coffee dip. In a separate bowl, add the coffee, cocoa and the rest of the chocolate liqueur.
Mix it up and now you’re ready to start layering! Get your springform pan out and a base to build the cake on. I used a disposable cardboard one found at hobby lobby. Dip each cookie you lay down in the mixture (quickly, so it doesn’t get soggy) and place it sugar-side down on the base.
*tip – Every so often, give the coffee dip a stir because the cocoa settles at the bottom.
Keep adding in more dipped cookie as you go to cover all the space. Essentially, this is the ‘cake’ part of the cake so you want it to be as uniform as possible!
I like to build mine up like this. There really is no wrong way to do this, but I love the end result by doing it this way in a spring form pan. You can try other variations, like a tall skinny glass for a personal parfait style one, using the same assembly principle I’m showing here.
Now once you got it to look like this, you can add a nice thick layer of the folded mixture. Spread it out and grate some of that semi-sweet baker’s square on top of it. It should look like this..
Layer in some more cookies, add some more cream mixture and repeat until you run out of space. Grate chocolate on top of each cream layer.
Finish with more grated chocolate on top and refrigerate for 24 hours. Remove the spring form pan before serving and tie a ribbon around it.
Dig in, and ENJOY!!!
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