tiramisu, anyone?

One of my favourite desserts is tiramisu, which means 'pick-me-up' (due to the espresso/coffee flavour). And thanks to my sister surprising me with The Illustrated Kitchen Bible (a recipe book that I have been obsessing over for the last few months) and a friend's birthday party this past weekend, I decided to ... attempt to make this cake. Thankfully, it didn't turn out so badly :)

If you choose to try out this recipe sometime, hopefully it'll look like this (or better than this):

Here are the weapons ingredients of choice:

And some brewed coffee (I'm using this one) mixed with a few teaspoons of liquer (I used brandy):

Mix the mascarpone (threw in a bit of ricotta cheese since there wasn't enough of the former) and the sugar together; in a separate bowl, you whip the cream and then you combine the two, folding it together instead of mixing or whipping it further. An option is to grate chocolate and combine it into this mix!

Take any serving dish of your choosing, and put a thin bottom layer of the mixture:

Dip the ladyfinger into your coffee - I found I soaked mine a little too much, but I love the strong flavour of coffee compared to others - so it's up to you how much you want to dip it in for! I accidentally dipped my thumbnail in there (it was yummy ... errr, yes).

And place it on top of the layer. Repeat as many times as needed!

Once you're complete setting your ladyfingers as you like, cover with another layer of the mixture:

And after you've spread it around, you can cover it with cocoa powder and grated chocolate:

Add another layer of dipped ladyfingers:

Cover once more with the mixture! As you can tell, there's lots of repetition with this cake:

Here's what the side view looks like at this point:

Cover again with whatever mixture you might have remaining until its spread thoroughly. I just took the bottom of my spoon to spread it vertically, then horizontally and I thought the little waves/ridges were a neat effect:

Then, I grated some bitter-sweet chocolate and placed on top before I put more cocoa powder:

I ended up having some leftover mixture, and since this was for a party, I decided to make a couple of extra ones for my parents ... in some cute little cups:

Et voila! Petit tiramisu! Don't mind the paper towel ... I realized after I made the main cake that it's handy to have some PT underneath while you're sprinkling the chocolate/cocoa on top:

Then, put the cake and the little cups in the freezer. I'd say for at least 4 hours.
Take it out, and enjoy!

That's The Boy's index finger making an appearance. That cake slice looked so pretty before he blocked it haha.

I know there's probably a few things I could tweak with it - I found the taste of the ricotta cheese more satisfying than the mascarpone, and maybe dipping in the ladyfingers for a shorter period of time - but overall, everyone really liked it at the party which made me happy (and then hungover, meep). My simple smile is that I was able to my favourite dessert for the first time and not fail horribly haha.

Here's the recipe in case you would like to try:

 LARGER IMAGE HERE | PDF VERSION (coming soon)

So ... tiramisu, anyone?

Please let me know what kind of recipes you enjoy and I'll see if I can find something to your liking in my beautiful new cookbook and share it! I'm off to my night class in a few hours (happy happy, joy joy). How's the start of your week been so far?