Tiramisu

Birthday Tiramisu!! My husband adores tiramisu and has been asking me to make it for years. Since I've had trouble finding the requisite ingredients and/or time to take on such a seemingly daunting task, I kept putting it off. This year my husband directly asked for it for his birthday. He didn't ask for gifts; he asked for tiramisu. And since we live in Chicago, with all of its wide variety of cultural markets, I knew I could find the right ingredients so I had no excuse not to give it a shot.

This is the recipe I chose: thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/desserts/tiramisu-2/

I love Pioneer Woman and was super excited to try this as my very first of her recipes. I did some minor tweeks, like took out the alcohol and made it a two-layer rather than a three-layer dessert, partly out of necessity and partly because of personal preference. Here is the resulting recipe:

Tiramisu
adapted from Pioneer Woman(Tasty Kitchen)

5 whole egg yolks
1/4 cups Plus 4 Tbsp sugar, divided
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 pound mascarpone cheese, softened
1-1/2 brewed espresso or VERY strong coffee
1 Tbsp vanilla
2-3 Tbsp Sugar in the Raw (or regular granulated sugar)
7 oz Ladyfingers (or Savoiardi)
cocoa powder, for dusting

1. In a saucepan, bring some water to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Find a mixing bowl that will fit over the top of the pan, but not sink all the way in. Put all 5 egg yolks in the mixing bowl. Add 1/4 cup sugar and whisk until pale yellow in color. Place the mixing bowl on the saucepan with the simmering water. Cook over the simmering water, scraping the sides and bottom occasionally for 5 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 45 minutes, or until cool.
2. Place the mascarpone cheese in a bowl and stir until smooth. In a mixing bowl, combine whipping cream and remaining 4 Tbsp sugar. Whip until soft peaks form. To the bowl of whipped cream, add the softened cheese and the chilled egg yolk mixture. Fold mixture gently. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours.
3. Measure 1 1/2 cups espresso or VERY strong coffee. Add 2-3 Tbsp Sugar in the Raw and 1 Tbsp vanilla. Arrange the ladyfingers in a single layer in a 9x13 pan. Spoon 1/2 to 1 Tbsp of the coffee mixture over each ladyfinger. Cover with 1/2 of the cold cream mixture and spread into a thin layer. Sprinkle with a layer of cocoa powder (so no white can be seen). Repeat process one more time.
4. Cover and refrigerate for a a few hours before serving.

Makes 8-10 servings.

The ingredients.

Cooking the egg yolks.

The mascarpone cheese. I love the texture! It is kind of like ricotta cheese in texture and cream cheese in flavor. I actually didn't have to go very far to find this cheese; our regular supermarket, Dominick's, has a decent cheese selection which included mascarpone.

Whipping the cream. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to go back to Cool Whip again. The last few recipes I've made (which I will be posting here shortly) have included whipping your own whipped cream and it is SO much better. Seriously, 3 extra minutes are definitely worth it and you get to add whatever you'd like to it (sugar, vanilla, mint extract, cream cheese) to specialize it for the dessert. Magic!

Mixing the cream, cheese, and egg yolk mixture. In this form, it looks...funky.

But just a minute later and it looks like this (and tastes unimaginably good).

Now the Pioneer Woman's recipe calls for Marsala in the coffee mixture (as well as the egg mixture). I didn't want to do the whole alcohol thing (especially since Tyler's not a big fan of the alcohol flavor in tiramisu) so I just skipped it. I decided that just to make sure things weren't too strong or too bitter, I'd add a little sugar to the coffee to sweeten it up (as the Marsala would have inevitably done as well). We like the combination of Sugar in the Raw with coffee but regular sugar would work just as well. I added 3 Tbsp to my very strong, regular coffee but I also had a bit more than 1 1/2 cups of coffee. If you're starting with 1 1/2 cups of coffee you might want to reduce the amount of sugar just a little to avoid it turning out too sweet.

The layer of ladyfingers soaked in coffee. Pioneer Woman's recipe calls for 7 oz of ladyfingers. I bought two packages of ladyfingers (at Jewel Osco, which is another regular supermarket in our area; it has a nice deli/bakery section that makes tiramisu, thus I was able to find the ladyfingers for sale) but that only turned out to be 6 oz. The 1 oz did make a difference and prevented me from making this a three-layer dessert. I thought about switching to a square baking dish, but finally decided against it when I laid the cookies out in the pan and realized that I would have some left over (I don't like to waste!). I'm actually glad things turned out this way because I think it would have been very difficult to get enough cream on each layer in the three-layer version.

Ladyfingers covered in cream.

This little tool came in quite handy for this recipe. It made dusting with cocoa powder much easier (and cleaner) than any alternatives that I had. Dusted with cocoa powder. You want to make sure that the entire layer is covered and that you can see very little white through the cocoa.

A note on cocoa powder: I used the special dark cocoa powder and I think that made a positive difference in this recipe. It made things just slightly less sweet and definitely added depth to the overall flavor combination.

The final product: layers of delectableness (yes, I made that word up). This was very, very good. For me, the cream mixture made the entire dessert. It was better than the cream of any of the other tiramisus we've tried (and tiramisu is our favorite dessert to order at a restaurant). The consistency was ideal and the flavor addictive. The dessert as a whole was much less sweet than any else we've tried but not bitter. My only reservation is the ladyfingers I purchased; they were not as crispy as I expected (more spongey). Next time I might make the extra leap and make my own ladyfingers. My husband would disagree with that assessment, though, and has told me that if I made this recipe precisely the same way for the rest of our lives, he would be quite content (isn't he sweet?!).

Brownie Bliss

Last week I finally made these brownies. I've been eyeing the recipe for quite a while but never found the time to actually try it out. Since we had a potluck to attend, I thought this might be a good opportunity to try it out and be able to sample the product without eating the entire pan.

Chewy Brownies
From Cook's Illustrated (with minor adaptations)

1/3 cup cocoa (the darker, the better)
1 1/2 tsp instant espresso (optional)
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp boiling water
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
6 oz bittersweet chocolate, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1. Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease pan or line with foil and grease foil (for easier cutting later).
2. Whisk cocoa, espresso powder and boiling water together in large bowl until smooth. Add unsweetened chocolate and whisk until chocolate is melted. Whisk in melted butter and oil. Add eggs, yolks, and vanilla and continue to whisk until smooth and homogeneous . Whisk in sugar until dissolved. Add flour and salt and mix with rubber spatula until combined. Fold in bittersweet pieces chocolate pieces.
3. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake until toothpick inserted halfway between edge and center comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and cool 1 1/2 hours.
4. If pan was lined foil, lift foil and brownies from pan and return to wire rack to cool completely. Cut into 2-inch squares and serve.

Makes 24 brownies.

The ingredients (minus the oil since I forgot to set it out and the espresso powder since I wanted these to be kid friendly).
This is a suggestion from Cook's Illustrated that worked great! To finely chop the chocolate, use a serrated knife. Instead of chopping, it's almost like you're finely grating it.

The cocoa, boiling water, and melted chocolate. Anything with this much chocolate has to turn out good, right? A note on cocoa: the original recipe called for dutch processed cocoa; I couldn't find that in our grocery store so I used the Hershey's Special Dark cocoa and it worked great.

Mixing in the flour.

I'm really bad at chopping chocolate. I either have way too big of chunks (because I'm too lazy to spend the time) or it crumbles into those super-fine shreds seen above. Since this recipe called for chocolate chunks (and I was feeling impatient), I decided to try a different tactic. We got out our Pampered Chef chopper and my magical kitchen elves pounded away. This still wasn't probably the best tactic and resulted in some pretty small chocolate chunks (but was way faster!). Next time around I may just buy chocolate chunks to save myself the time and effort. I'm a wuss like that.

I ran out of foil or I would have tried the foil method. It sounds like it would make getting pretty brownies so much easier. But who am I kidding? Nobody eats brownies because they're pretty.

The finished brownie. The original recipe calls for letting the brownie cool completely before cutting. Being that I'm impatient and chronically unprepared, I didn't have time to let these cool completely before cutting into them. As a result, the brownies were pretty sticky and did not cut up nicely. They still tasted fantastic though. This is by far the best homemade brownie recipe I've tried. The brownie had a lot of chocolate taste and a wonderful, chewy consistency (unlike the somewhat dry versions I've tried before). Pretty or not, this recipe gets a gold star from me!