When I was 15, I went on a trip to Italy and Spain through a program with my high school. Obviously, we travelled as a large group. Every night we would have a pre-booked group dinner and the accommodating restaurant would have to feed our large group. I am not kidding you when I say that every night in Italy we were served two things: pizza and tiramisu.
I now know why tiramisu was so commonly served, since it’s not only a popular Italian dessert (I already knew that) but it’s also very easy to prepare in large batches. I think this goes without saying that by the end of the trip, the thought of eating another tiramisu made me sick. I decided after several years that it was time to face it again and that is what lead me here to this blog post.
The Recipe Process
After a long internet search, I decided to go with the recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. Sally gets her recipe from Maida Heatter who is apparently considered to be the Queen of Cake, which basically sold me on it. Tiramisu is usually made with a heavy cream or whipped egg whites. Heavy cream yields a richer tiramisu while egg whites make for a lighter one. Maida’s recipe uses both which I think made for a nice balance.
The basics of tiramisu are as follows: layer mascarpone cream and espresso dipped lady fingers. Sounds easy right? It actually is pretty simple, except you’ll be needing a few seperate bowls for various steps such as for mixing together the marscapone cheese, tempering the egg yolks, whipping the whipped cream and whipping the egg whites (which requires a clean bowl and whisk).
I used my KitchenAid stand mixer for this, and ended up washing the bowl and whisk attachment three times so that I could use it for various steps (call me lazy but I was not about to whip anything by hand). This makes the process a little bit longer, but it’s still an easy process and totally worth it.
Ingredients
Mascarpone cheese is easy to source out and you can pick it up from any local italian store or even Whole Foods. The lady fingers you get need to be the hard kind, not the cakey kind. Otherwise, they’ll be way too soft after you dip them into the espresso. What you want to look for is savoiardi style lady fingers, which are hard and crunchy. I got mine from my local italian market.
Sally says that if you use pasteurized eggs, you don’t need to pasteurize the egg whites before you whip them. I had no idea what kind of eggs I had so I decided to just pasteurize them anyways.
How I did this was I placed the egg whites, salt and sugar into a bowl and placed the bowl in a saucepan over (not in) simmering water (a double boiler). I whisked them continuously until the egg whites were hot to the touch but not so hot to where they cooked, about three minutes. Then I immediately transferred them into my stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whipped it until soft peaks formed.
Lastly, you need to make espresso to dip the lady fingers in. Whenever I make desserts using espresso or coffee, I opt for decaf because I usually serve them later in the evening after dinner. I didn’t have decaf espresso at the time and instead substituted the espresso for really strong coffee using decaf instant coffee.
What I Learned
- Have a clean workspace before hand so you’re ready to switch up bowls and wash your supplies to reuse
- Use 6 Tablespoons decaf instant coffee powder in 1 and 1/4 cups hot water as a substitute for espresso, and although it tastes horrible by itself, it works amazing with the rest of the layers.
- Temper egg whites in a double boiler
- Be prepared to have a lot of leftovers if you have a small family (fills a 13×9 inch dish)
- Although some recipes say that you can eat tiramisu after 6 hours of assembling it, wait a full 24 hours for the best results so that the flavours can really merge together
- Don’t over-beat the egg whites and instead whisk them until soft peaks form, otherwise the texture will be a bit off
And that’s it! I’m going to play around with more tiramisu recipes in the future but for now, this is what I have learned. Be prepared to set aside a good portion of an afternoon to make this dessert and to have patience when letting it rest in the fridge. Although that doesn’t sound ideal, it is so worth it and after my traumatic experience with tiramisu (that might be an over exaggeration), I have now rekindled by appreciation for this famous italian dessert!
Check out the recipe I used here.
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