This has been the longest I’ve been away from the blog, and I’ve missed hanging around here with you. I am so happy to be back here and talking about my favourite thing in the world: baking. But before I move on to that, I owe you guys an update. Thank you so much for your multitude of e-mails and concern. You guys are wonderful! This period of silence on the blog was totally unplanned. I’ve very recently had the most phenomenal opportunity to be the food editor for BBC Good Food India come my way. Food editor! (yep, that was hard to type out without a crazy number of exclamation marks). A slew of good things have timed themselves together, and I’m so very grateful. For the past few weeks, my day starts with an early morning French class, followed by an hour long commute to work, and the rest of the day choc-a-block with meetings, planning, recruiting, creating templates and dummy magazines, sourcing and planning photo shoots. It’s like a crash course in magazine journalism with the launch date looming over our heads. I absolutely positively love it.
Now let’s get back to talking about baking.
All that trouble I went through for the mascarpone cheese was all for a good cause: a Tiramisù from scratch. The lady finger biscuits too. Readers and friends who’ve known me for a while did a double take when I told them I was making Tiramisù. “But you don’t like coffee!” they said. That’s true, but then I’m quick to make an exception when I want to replicate, or at least match up to, the Tiramisù that changed my opinion forever.
It took one very persistent friend and just one bite of Tiramisù from a tiny restaurant in Verona to alter my opinion. It was our first evening in Italy and as were flipping through the dessert menu, my friend Kainaz suggested I must try the Tiramisù. “Nah, I’m not sure I want to eat that. I’m not a fan of coffee,” I said. “How can you not eat Tiramisu in Italy?” she scorned. I sheepishly relented. And that was it. One bite, and I knew I wasn’t sharing my glass of Tiramisù with anyone, but “poor Kainaz offered hers and it went around the table”, I noted in my travel journal. Uh oh.
After a while, I felt the need to replicate the Tiramisù back here in Bombay. Kainaz braved the stormy weather to bring me her special coffee blend and Kahlua. I made several visits to the supermarket to get exactly 6 packets of Parsi dairy cream (that eventually didn’t work) and then fresh cream. I collected recipes and tips from various sources: friends in Italy, readers who swear by their recipe, and others who’d taken up a short course while travelling through Italy. What I noticed across all the recipes that I put together from very reliable sources is that they were almost identical. Another friend, Marco, even sent me 18 step-by-step photos for the recipe. It was all very exciting.
After a week of effort and a few not-so-perfect batches of mascarpone, I finally made my Tiramisù from scratch. It was sublime. Coffee and kahlua soaked sponges; soft and cloud-like creamy mascarpone topped with Valrhona cocoa and chocolate shavings. It was nothing short of heaven in a jar.
It’s a project worth investing your time in. You will be proud of yourself and the Tiramisù thieves will attack your refrigerator.
Tiramisù Recipe
A. Savoiardi Lady Finger Biscuits
Adapted from: Delicious Days
Ingredients:
3 (large) eggs, divided
90g white sugar, divided
1 tsp vanilla extract
60 g all-purpose flour
~2 tbsp confectioners’ sugar
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 200°C (390 °F). Line two baking trays with a silicone baking mat.
- Beat the egg yolks with half of the sugar (45 g.) until creamy and pale (about 4 minutes on medium speed with a KitchenAid). Mix in the vanilla extract.
- In a separate bowl beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, add the remaining sugar slowly and continue to whisk until the egg whites look glossy and form stiff peaks.
- Sieve the flour into the bowl containing the creamy egg yolks and fold it in with a spatula. Then, fold in the whipped egg whites.
- Fill the batter into a piping bag and snip off the end to give an approximately 1.5 cm diameter and pipe the batter into ladyfinger shapes, about 10 cm/4 inches long, leaving enough space between them as they expand during baking. Generously dust with confectioners’ sugar, then bake until they just start to reach a slight golden color, 11 to 13 minutes. Remove from oven.
- Carefully pull the lady fingers from the silicone mat. They keep in an airtight container (divided by parchment or waxed paper) for a few of days, but are best consumed freshly baked.
B. Light, Creamy Mascarpone
500g mascarpone cheese
4 eggs, separated
90g sugar
- Beat the egg whites in a bowl. Whip them until soft peaks form. Begin adding 45g of the sugar so slowly until the egg whites are stiff and shiny.
- In another bowl, beat the remaining 45 sugar with the egg yolks until thick and creamy. Set aside.
- Whip the mascarpone cheese in a third bowl. To it, add the beaten egg yolks and mix until fully incorporated.
- Gently fold the egg whites into the mascarpone and egg mixture. Refrigerate for a while until it’s ready for assembling.
C. Coffee Solution
Mix together 2 cups of strongly brewed coffee and 60ml kahlua to use as the soaking syrup for the sponge fingers.
Interestingly, none of the recipes in my inbox that hailed from Italy had Kahlua added to it. Just strongly brewed coffee.
D. Assembling the Tiramisù
You could either assemble it as one big cake, or for easier serving and prettier looking individual desserts you could assemble it in a glass or canning jars. When you make them in canning jars, they make for lovely gifts, too.
Fill a shallow dish or baking pan with the coffee solution. Dip the lady fingers or Savoiardi biscuits (if you’re using readymade) in it. Make sure to just barely dip them and then remove from the pan, else they will fall apart. Cover the biscuits with a layer of Tiramisù cream and dust with cocoa powder. My Italian friend suggests dotting the surface with some melted chocolate for some crunch on cooling. Lay down the next layer of soaked savoiardi: put them in the opposite direction, crossing the direction of the previous layer. Cover the second layer with the cream. Flatten as you go. Continue in the same fashion until you have filled up your glass. Finally, sprinkle the tiramisù with cocoa powder and grated chocolate. Let this set in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. Some people even prefer to chill it overnight for the coffee flavour to meld into the mascarpone.
When assembling the Tiramisù, I used a piping bag to layer the creamy mascarpone over the lady fingers for better presentation and more neatness.
Good to know: Tira mi sù is an Italian phrase that means ‘pick me up’.