pick me up

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

Mmm. Tiramisu. I've been making tiramisu for a long time now. Ever since my sister hunted up this recipe to make at home, after my brother spent most of his time at the sushi buffet eating the little tiramisu squares at the dessert bar. At least, I think that's approximately when it started. Everyone thinks tiramisu is difficult and impressive- let me tell you, it's really not. It does take a little patience, and the knowledge of how to use a double broiler (or a pot of hot water with a heat-proof pan on top), but seriously, not difficult. A little time consuming, because it's the kind of dessert that gets better as it sits. But anyway, I digress. I love tiramisu, and I made it twice in the span of two weeks.

Anyway. This time, the challenge included making the marscapone cheese and making the lady fingers. So this one was a little more time-consuming, requiring some planning ahead.

I've tried this marscapone cheese recipe several times (who knew marscapone cheese was just heated cream? Why does heating the cream and adding some acid- lemon juice- then separating out a little bit of water turn it into cheese? It's like magic!) but it never seems to work quite right. I think I need more space between my sieve and the bottom of the bowl I let it sit in, because it took way longer than overnight for it to set, and that was after dumping out the residual water (whey?) twice. I had to use a smaller bowl in order to fit it in the fridge. And I gave up on trying to use cheesecloth- after I poured the curdled cheese into the cheesecloth, nearly all of it filtered through into the bowl, which didn't seem right at all to me. I used two coffee filters instead- maybe that's why it took so long to set, but at any rate, it worked.

I also don't think my ladyfingers rose quite as much as they were supposed to- not sure if the temperature was off in the oven, or what. But they still tasted good. I should have dipped them fully in the coffee mixture the first time, I was a little worried about them crumbling after reading other DB's comments in the forums, so I only dipped them halfway, but then the tiramisu was a little too cakey for my liking.

I've never made it with a pastry cream, so that was fun. And I don't usually put lemon zest in my zabaglione, so that was interesting. (I really need a zester.) But I really liked the slight lemon kick to it.

Assembled tiramisu

Mini tiramisu

Tiramisu take 2: this one I should have put in a 8x8 pan instead of a 9x13, and made 3-4 layers instead of just 2. I also left out the pastry cream and used the amount of zabaglione that I normally use, and it was lovely.

I am not very creative. I thought about doing a green tea version, with a dusting of green tea powder on top, but I wasn't sure that the tea would be enough oomph to dip the cookies into. And I'd love to try passionfruit, but nowhere seems to sell it. I'm also a stickler for following directions. ;)

Anyway. I could get into the habit of making my own marscapone cheese (so much cheaper than buying it), but I dunno if I want to take the effort to make my own lady fingers unless I have something special in mind. Different shaped tiramisu would definitely benefit from homemade ladyfingers.