I had an unpleasant dream last night, woke up exhausted and I rushed my way to work feeling very sleepy. I had instant noodle for breakfast (at 6am), which was an unwise decision that I made and I had to deal with my tummy feeling funny during my 5 hours shift at work as the consequence. Ppfffttt... I will never eat instant noodle for breakfast that early ever again.
During the entire 20 minutes bus ride to work, all I could think of was "I need coffee.. I need coffee.. I need coffee..". I was desperately in a need of a caffeine fix. Then suddenly the word "tiramisu" popped in my head and I thought a tiramisu cake would be really nice to make after work!
The 20 minutes bus ride gave me some time to browse recipes on my phone. There are a lot of different versions of tiramisu. Some are stupidly simple to pull off and some requires more effort and a bit more challenging. At first I was going for a very simple version of tiramisu but I decided to challenge myself by opting for a recipe that use eggs!
I was a bit skeptical about having raw eggs in a cake.
What if the cake smells bad?
What if the cake taste eggy?
What if I get salmonela?
Oh well,
screw that.
I'm just going to man up and try it anyway.
----------
Tiramisu
Adapted from Taste
Ingredients:
- 2 cups of cold black coffee
- 1/2 cup of orange juice (or Marsala / Tia Maria for a liquored up version)
- 3 egg yolks
- 3 egg whites
- 1/3 cup caster sugar
- 250 g mascarpone
- 300 ml thickened cream, whipped
- 1 large package of savoiardi biscuits (lady fingers)
- cocoa powder
1. Prepare your first 'dunking solution' first . Make your coffee, mix it with *orange juice (or preferred liquor) and then chill it in the fridge until needed.
2. With an electric mixer, beat together the yolks and sugar until it turns pale and thick. While mixing on low speed, carefully add the mascarpone and whipped cream. Mix until well combined, set aside.
3. In a different bowl, beat egg whites until it turns **stiff and gently fold it into the mascarpone mixture with a spatula.
4. To assemble the components, make sure you have everything within arm reach : your dunking solution (in a shallow dish), lady fingers, mascarpone mixture, your pan (ceramic dish/pyrex/anything will do) and cocoa powder (with a sifter). You might want to prepare a knife to just in case you need to cut the lady fingers to fit the pan you're using.
5. Dunk the lady finger one by one into the dunking solution for 1 or 2 seconds only and carefully arrange them to cover the bottom of the pan. Cover the lady fingers with the cream mixture and repeat the layers (ideally 2 times) or until your pan is full, making sure that the mascarpone mixture is the top layer of the cake.
6. Dust with cocoa powder. Be creative! I used strips of papers to create lines on it. It's messy but a lot of fun!
7. Refrigerate for 2 hours or more before serving
*The original recipe used Marsala wine but it gives orange juice as an option. Sounds weird at first, but it does taste really good ! Somehow it cuts away the richness of the cream a little bit.
**The recipe only said to beat the egg whites until soft peak, but comments from people suggested to beat it until stiff to help the cake firm up better
I bought a large package of lady fingers and thought that there would be some leftovers because the mascarpone and cream pots were quiet small. But to my surprise, I used them all and got 2 pans of tiramisu now sitting in my fridge ready to be gulped down! All the ingredients (minus the coffee) only cost be around $18. Pretty cheap for 2 pans of tiramisu, right?
This was a very successful experiment and I am super happy with the result.
A must try!!
L: Beating the cream!
R: Cramming all the biscuits ..
The multipurpose Coles catalog!
No comments:
Post a Comment