Homemade Tiramisu (with no cheating)

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

I've made tiramisu before, but never completely from scratch. Usually I purchase the mascarpone cheese and ladyfingers, but the challenge required us to make them both in addition to making the pastry cream, whipped cream and zabaglione! Oh, dear.

So needless, to say, it was a bit time consuming but very much worth it. Tiramisu is one of my favorite desserts and I probably never would have taken the time to learn to make the ladyfingers had I skipped this month's challenge. I always wondered how the cookies got their sheen on top and it's actually because of the egg whites that have been meringued (below) and the addition of powdered sugar.

The hard part was trying to make each cookie uniform, so I piped them out onto parchment paper but I made them a bit too large.

I thought they looked a bit more like Little Caesar's Crazy Bread than ladyfingers...

Ok, so here is the step that reminded me I need to read the recipe in it's entirety before beginning and not just scan. The mascarpone cheese required cheesecloth to make it, which I didn't have and since it was 11:00 at night and snowing, I really didn't feel like venturing out to find some. Thank you Google, for helping me find that I could substitute with a strainer and coffee filters.

So essentially, once you have your mascarpone cheese made, you make your pastry cream, zabaglione and whipped cream. All of these items need to set up in the refrigerator about 4 hours or over night. After that, you combine them all together and layer over top of the lady fingers that have been dipped in espresso, about 3 layers high and dust the top with cocoa powder. I did an 8 x 8 pan of it below but I also used individual glasses as you saw in the beginning photo. I prefer to serve it in glasses when I make it for guests because unless you freeze tiramisu, it's difficult to cut and serve without it looking messy. I actually think it's easier to assemble in individual servings as well. My sister-in-law sprinkles broken up toffee bits in the layers when she makes hers, so making individual portions gives you the freedom to switch it up a bit based on who likes what.

Here is the link for the recipe in it's entirety. Great job Aparna and Deeba for picking this one!