Daring Bakers - Tiramisu

 (Left to Right: Coffee Tiramisu, Chocolate Tiramisu and Mocha Tiramisu)

I LOVE tiramisu! It's rich, decadent and a bit of a pain to make, all good points in my book. While I have made it before, the challenge this month had us make EVERYTHING from scratch and it turned out amazing.

First off, I made the mascarpone cheese. Despite the recipe saying it should take about 15 minutes to heat to 190F in the double boiler set up, after about 45 minutes I switched to a saucepan to get it up to temp. But it thickened right away when I put in the lemon juice and tasted great - creamy with a good tang.

Next was the zabaglione (right). This is essentially a VERY rich custard flavored with marsala wine. When Kat and I tasted it, I was a bit dismayed - the marsala flavor was overpowering and the custard was intensely sweet. In the end, though, it faded into the background and (I think) just added a additional richness to the cream portion of the tiramisu.

I'd always pictured pastry cream (left) to be something else! This is the filling in custard doughnuts... light but rich, creamy... YUM. And it was incredibly easy to make. I think this was one of the best parts of this challenge since I'm now picturing Boston Cream Pies, homemade doughnuts and pouring it on just about anything.

This is the dough for the savoiardi (ladyfingers). I was expecting the cookies to be fairly difficult, but the dough went together in no time. The texture was amazing! Luckily, though, I had Kat taste it before I piped it out onto the cookie sheets. Turns out, the grocery store had somehow mixed self-rising flour or maybe straight baking powder into the bin marked cake flour. The batter was horribly salty so it all went into the garbage. I made the next batch with all purpose flour and it was fantastic. I used a plastic bag to pipe the cookies. The big round ones were for the main body of the tiramisu, and the little ones were for decoration (and munching). These are NOT cookies I'd make for eating plain, but they were pretty tasty. 

I wanted to make small tiramisus so I could give most of them away, rather than having a big pan of it here at home. I made forms out of tin foil and the round cookies (above) fit inside it. I'd expected the cookies to puff outward more than they did, so the sizes weren't exact, but it still worked.

The creamy layers of the tiramisu are made of the zabaglione, mascarpone cheese, pastry cream and whipped cream. I kept the whipped cream just barely sweetened so the cheese and that balanced out the sweetness of the other ingredients. It was a bit softer than I think it should have been, but it sure was tasty. I had enough of everything to make 6 small tiramisus - 2 coffee, 2 chocolate and 2 mocha. Once I'd filled the tin foil forms, they went into the freezer until they were hard and could be decorated.

When frozen, they were MUCH easier to work with, although as soon as they thawed they got a bit gloppy. The coffee ones were dusted with instant espresso powder and topped with cookies and coffee beans. The chocolate ones were dusted with cocoa powder and topped with a milk chocolate disk (and more cookies). The mocha was a combo...

 

DELICIOUS.

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.