134. Tiramisu is such a deliciously light, sweet and coffee rich dessert. While shopping, I picked up a bag of lady finger cookies used in making Italian desserts. They are not very sweet but pare with so many dessert flavors and are very versatile.
In order to make a traditional Tiramisu you need to use raw eggs and my girls are not fans of meringue or the after taste of a raw egg. So I found a very simple recipe from Jamie Oliver's
Quick Tiramisu
Epicurious | February 2006
By Jamie Oliver
Jamie's Italy
Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's Italy.
Tiramisù veloce
There are lots of different recipes for tiramisù — this one includes my favorite twists on the original and it works really well with those bought ladyfingers. Try it — you'll get fantastic results. The word tiramisù translates as "pick-me-up." Yield: Makes 4 servings
 15 ladyfingers
1 cup good strong coffee, freshly brewed
4 tablespoons sugar
1 pound 2 ounces mascarpone
2 vanilla beans
1/2 cup vin santo or sweet sherry
Zest and juice of 1 orange
3 1/2 ounces best-quality bittersweet chocolate (70 % cocoa solids)
 Get yourself a medium deep bowl or dish about 8-10 inches in diameter and arrange your ladyfingers snugly in layers on top of each other. Sweeten your coffee with 2 tablespoons of the sugar. Pour the coffee over the ladyfingers, making sure the top layer is completely covered — you'll see the coffee being sucked up by the ladyfinger. While that's soaking, put your mascarpone into a bowl and whisk it up with the rest of the sugar. Score the vanilla beans lengthwise and scrape the seeds out into the bowl of mascarpone, keeping the beans for making vanilla sugar if you want to. Continue whisking and as you do so, drizzle in the vin santo or sherry. You want to get the mixture to a loose, shiny consistency. If it's still too thick you can use a little of the orange juice to loosen it before you squeeze the rest of the juice over the ladyfingers. Smear the vanilla mascarpone over the ladyfingers and either grate all the chocolate over it or make shavings using a knife or a peeler. Sprinkle lightly with a little finely grated orange zest and keep in the fridge until you're ready to serve.
I collected my ingredients and decided to make individual servings and cut the recipe into 1/4. Then, I selected beautiful glasses for each individual serving. These glasses were in a Goodwill Store several years ago for only 25 cents each! |
I used 6 lady finger cookies and broke them in half.
I poured only enough coffee to saturate the cookies.
I squeezed fresh orange juice directly over each serving.
Mixed up the Mascarpone, orange extract, vanilla and 1 Tablespoon sugar till smooth. Then covered the lady finger base with the creamy, sweet wonderfulness...which I could have eaten with my fingers...and getting every last little bit scraped from the bowl. So Good!
While the dessert was chilling in the refrigerator, I melted semi-sweet chocolate, spread some on a cookie sheet covered in tin foil and piped the remainder from a zip lock bag to make shapes. I then placed the mini cookie sheet in the freezer.
To finish the dessert, I dolloped whipped cream on top, made chocolate curls and orange zest.
It was simple, fun and looked so beautiful when it was all together.
The chocolate heart was just an added touch.
What a nice ending to a long day and a wonderful "pick-me-up" dessert.
And the Tiramisu was a hit! But it disappeared too fast.
"All I ever wanted to do was to make food accessible to everyone;
to show that you can make mistakes - I do all the time - but it doesn't matter."
~ Jamie Oliver
