Tiramisu, first attempt / Welcome 2020

The finished product

A coworker made tiramisu for the Mountaineers' Christmas party this year, and it was the best I'd had since my very first tiramisu which was a few decades back at an Italian restaurant in Germany during the Frankfurt Book Fair. Since that first heavenly experience I've ordered it repeatedly and been been disappointed time and again as I've been served dry nasty concoction after dry nasty concoction. The coworker gave me her recipe which she got from the woman with whom she lived while studying in Italy some years ago. The secret, she said, was to include no whipping cream.

Shortly before Christmas I bought all the ingredients, thinking I'd make tiramisu for one of the holiday dinners we'd be going to, but instead I chickened out. (Oh, I still tried a new recipe for one meal and it was fabulous, despite a few hitches like pulling it out of the oven before it had baked all the way through, causing the center to collapse a little. Another ten minutes in the oven dealt with the still goopy issue. A few mint leaves and some geranium petals covered up the crater nicely. Alas, no photos. I swear it was both delicious and beautiful. Certainly it was all eaten up.)

The mascarpone wasn't going to last forever, however, so today I did a test run on the recipe, this time excessively documented in photos.

Step one: soak your Italian lady fingers in espresso. I used one cup of instant espresso for six fingers; I was amazed at how the cookies soaked up the liquid like they were little sponges. The recipe called for four fingers for every egg used and I used two eggs so I should have used two more fingers, but my pan wouldn't hold that many. In hindsight, it was a mistake to mess with the 4 fingers to 1 egg proportions. When I make this again, I'll correct that.

Little sponge lady fingers have soaked up all the espresso.

 Step two: Divide your eggs. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks. Beat the egg yolks with sugar (I used about a tablespoon total which seemed about right. The recipe said to add a little sugar and taste; "it should taste a little sweeter than you think it should.") Add 2 ounces of mascarpone to the egg yolk mixture, blending well. (Next time I might go a little heavier on the mascarpone.) Stir in a bit of brandy; as with the sugar, add a little more than you think you might want. (Is cognac the same as brandy? That's what I used, and it seemed to work quite well. I used very little--maybe a teaspoon?)

Egg yolks and sugar, whipped egg whites, fun-size cognac, and mascarpone. The recipe suggested beating the mascarpone a bit if it seemed too cold or hard to avoid lumps. I'm not sure this mascarpone required the extra attention but it did no harm.

Step three: Fold the egg whites into the yolk/mascarpone mixture. At this stage I felt like maybe I should have whipped the egg whites a little longer--or maybe added a bit of sugar to them as well as to the yolks; they seemed to be reverting to liquid a bit at the bottom of the bowl.

Step four: Pull the lady fingers out of the refrigerator (where I put them at the end of step one; I sort of got distracted there and can't find an elegant way to incorporate this detail into what I've already written above). Pour the mixture on top of the lady fingers. (I felt I had far too much topping relative to fingers at this stage and didn't use all of it.) Sprinkle generously with cocoa and serve as much as you can convince someone to eat. This (2 egg-version) is probably 4 to 6 servings. We had it with tea and grappa. Scott noted that it paired far better with the grappa than with the tea.

A new New Years' Day tradition? Probably not but happy new years!