Tiramisu

Never underestimate the power of a good dessert.  Last week, after the Packers' devastating loss, Chris was in need of some cheer.  I told him to pick whatever he wanted, and we could make it.  Chris chose tiramisu; now we had tried this once before, and the result was only OK.  This time Chris wanted to try making our own Lady Fingers; he was sure this was the key to better tiramisu.  Last Sunday night we made part I of the dessert, and the cookies turned out great! They don't have much flavor and are extremely soft, so they make awesome kid cookies!  If I were going to make these to eat by themselves, I would probably adjust the recipe to include some flavor (like vanilla extract or something).  Our recipe is from here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/ladyfingers/
Here's what they looked like:

The recipe made 2 sheets.

I obviously didn't do a very clean job of piping the cookies, but I wasn't really worried about how they looked because they were going inside of the tiramisu.

The next day we embarked on part II of our dessert adventure.  I love the Olive Garden's tiramisu, so I tried to find a copy cat recipe and I think we found a winner!  The original is seen here: http://restaurantrecipesbook.com/olive-garden-tiramisu-recipe/.  We made a few adjustments:
-Cut back to 2/3 cup sugar
-I used 2 cups mascarpone (because that's all I had...and it was definitely plenty)
-We used our homemade lady fingers
-We tweaked the coffee mixture to include Marsala; 1/3 cup each strong coffe, Kahlua liqueur, and Marsala
This turned out so so well! We will definitely be making this again! It's a little pricey to make because of the marscapone.  I figured we spent about $14 total, but it made a very generous 9 servings (more like 12 or 13)..so per piece it's not too bad! Here's the finished product!