The Daring Bakers' February Challenge - Tiramisu

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. (Recipe HERE)

Mmmmmm. It may not be as photogenic, but when it comes to taste, tiramisu has to be my favorite of all the DB challenges I've completed. "Heaven in a Dish" would be a more appropriate name! Usually I'm looking for a way to share the finished dessert with people, so we don't have to consume all of the calories. This time, although I did share it with friends at a dinner, it took great will power not to keep it all for myself! The combination of zabaglione (flavored with coffee and a touch of rum extract), vanilla pastry cream and homemade mascarpone cheese, folded into a bowl of freshly whipped cream and layered over espresso-soaked lady fingers, was sinfully scrumptious.

For the challenge we had to make, from scratch, the lady fingers as well as the mascarpone cheese. Looking to the future, though, if I purchased (rather than made) the mascarpone and the lady fingers, cooking up the filling and putting the tiramisu together into a dish wouldn't be such a difficult task and could be accomplished in an afternoon for dinner that evening. It's on my to-do list.

A pan of homemade lady fingers, dusted with powdered sugar.

Cooking up the heavy cream and lemon juice, in a double boiler, to make the mascarpone cheese.

To decorate the top, I cut out a Valentine snowflake, laid it on top of the tiramisu and sifted cocoa powder through the snowflake template. After carefully removing the snowflake, this pattern was left on top of the dessert.





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