It’s been awhile since I’ve last updated this blog. Life has sort of gotten in the way in terms of busyness. Somewhere between the church retreats, the youth events, an apartment move, and weddings, I’ve managed to find some time here and there to make a few things. I think I’m definitely behind on my 52 food list goal but here’s to playing catch up.

As I was packing for my move, I uncovered an unopened pack of Ladyfingers. Now, I confess, I’ve made tiramisu before but I’m going to say that the previous one didn’t count because the mascarpone cheese filling came out weird and chunky. As I packed away the Ladyfingers, I put them away in the back of my mind for use of a future redemption tiramisu at some point.

The opportunity presented itself at a potluck. Recently, following a work survey, my church decided to implement weekly casual potlucks. So, for one lifegroup time, I decided to make tiramisu, using this recipe from SeriousEats’ Stella Parks, along with some homemade Hershey’s chocolate syrup from her book, BraveTart.

Homemade Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup

So, one hurdle I had to consider was how I was going to make the coffee soaking liquid for the ladyfingers without alcohol. The idea of a tiramisu made without alcohol is kinda sacrilegious but oh well. An alternative to chocolate liqueur that Stella suggested (because I wasn’t going to go out and buy Cardamaro or creme de cacao) was to add chocolate syrup. Because I will never pass the opportunity to be unnecessarily extra, I decided to ignore the perfectly good bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup I had in the fridge and make my own.

This mixture came together pretty quickly. It was a mixture of black coffee, cocoa powder (Hershey’s too!), a few squares of dark chocolate, brown sugar, vanilla, and salt. After whisking everything together under low heat, it was just a matter of waiting for it to cool down to a syrupy consistency.

And it tasted like….chocolate syrup. It was a fun exercise but in hindsight, I don’t think it was that much of a flavor enhancement in comparison to storebought. Though maybe I’m just saying that because I don’t care for chocolate that much?

I also now have a jar full of syrup that I do not know what to do with.

I used an 8:1 ratio of black coffee : chocolate syrup when putting together the ladyfinger dunking liquid.

Tiramisu

The trickiest part of this recipe was putting together the mascarpone filling. In other recipes, I noticed that the filling was a mixture of putting together whipped heavy cream and mascarpone cheese together.

Why not choose to make life a little bit more difficult for myself?

Setting my mixing bowl over on a double boiler, I got to beating some eggs and some sugar to make some sort of simplified version of a Swiss meringue over the course of 10-15 minutes until the thermometer read 160F. Thank goodness for the invention of thermometers.

I set the bowl on the mixer and proceeded to let it whip on high speeds for close to 15 minutes, cleaning up my workstation in the meantime. I noticed that the mixture did double up in volume but looked to be a consistency similar to marshmallow creme (because it had yolks too). It never quite stiffen but after that, I added the mascarpone cheese. Upon the cheese addition, it did look a little lumpy, which sent some alarm bells in my head, but it eventually smoothed itself out.

That filling tasted reeaallllllyyyyy good. Wow, I could literally eat the filling by itself.

I then assembled the tiramisu. Dunk the ladyfingers for a few seconds, then add a layer of mascarpone cheese filling, then dusted with some cocoa powder, then repeat. I let the tiramisu cool and soak in the fridge overnight.

The next day, when I actually tried it, I noticed that the ladyfingers were not completely soft and it seemed to come apart in discrete, soft parts of fingers (not like cake)…which wasn’t the thing I was trying to go for. Other than the texture confusion, the taste came together pretty well. Unsurprisingly, the mascarpone cheese filling was my favorite part of the dish.

It turns out that the trick for the texture was to let it sit for two days. The next day when I had leftovers, the ladyfingers soften completely and took the desired consistency of cake. The flavors seemed to have deepen to be more complex/melded together.

This time, the tiramisu definitely entered my clean plate club. No lumpy filling this time around and some new things tried (I think I could have gotten away with just adding storebought Hershey’s syrup), this was a good redemption tiramisu.