peony

Sunday, January 22, 2012

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!


5 comments:

  1. Wow, that's beautiful! I'm envious that you have the ambition to conquer something so difficult (I only make super easy stuff). I am not even familiar with tiramisu or any of the things in it but I will look it up to see. Pretty!

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  2. Thanks guys! I really was impressed with how well this turned out! Leslie, I meant to talk to you and Meg today about blogging. I obviously don't have everything figured out and my layout is in some serious need of help! Oh well, I never claimed to be creative! :)

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  3. You can talk to me any time about it - although I don't have much figured out either. In my opinion, blogger is not very user friendly. I do have little tid-bits I've learned along the way from people or from trial-and-error, so feel free to ask anything any time.

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  4. BTW.. this was bomb and I miss it already.

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