Preparing Tiramisu

Hello people, hope you’re doing well today! Now I want to tell you about Tiramisu and how I made it and what it was all like.

As you may know, Tiramisu is an Italian cake and it’s made of mascarpone cheese, heavy cream, ladyfingers and other stuff, but mainly there are these ingredients. For many times I thought, preparing Tiramisu was really hard and I thought that I couldn’t make it, so I didn’t even think about preparing it until now, when I had this strong feeling of preparing it. and this all happened during my exams and the feeling was so strong that I couldn’t really concentrate on my studies, so I had to prepare it, you know what I’m saying?! Because I knew, that that feeling wouldn’t go away just easily and I had to ace my examination, you know, I study medicine and I had this gynecology exam of OSCE and they said it was kind of difficult examination and besides, this was really different kind of examination because of its format and stuff.

Anyways, Tiramisu is a great cake and I like it very much. It’s very soft and light and easy to eat. Of course, it has a great taste, too, and that espresso flavor is just amazing!

First time I ever tasted Tiramisu was in England in Cambridge in an Italian café. Me and my friend were there and I remember that I wanted to eat pizza and she ordered Tiramisu. She suggested tasting it, so I tasted it and I really liked it, because it had this distinguished taste that I hadn’t tasted before. So, that was my first time tasting Tiramisu and since then I just want to eat it when it comes to cakes.

Well, I thought that preparing Tiramisu was very difficult, because no one around me made it and one piece of it was more expensive than other cakes and somehow I thought that it was really hard to be prepared and that’s why it was expensive and not available everywhere. Guess what?! Preparing it is not hard, it’s actually pretty easy and kind of amusing and exciting.

Getting the ingredients in Tbilisi

So, while I was trying to surf the Internet to find the most delicious Tiramisu cake recipe, I found lots of them and I also watched them on Youtube and so on and so forth and there didn’t seem to be any difficulties, so I just had to buy the ingredients and that would be it! Well, the most difficult ingredient to find in Tbilisi was the heavy cream, I guess, because while you can find mascarpone cheese in almost every big supermarket, you can’t really find heavy cream everywhere. I had to search for it for a while in Internet and in grocery stores, too to find it. Most of them just had those whipping creams, which are 35% at their most and heavy cream should be from 36% as I read in articles. So, finally, I found this heavy cream in Carrefour in East Point and they had just this 1 Litre heavy cream and though I didn’t need that much, I didn’t really have a choice, so I bought it.

Now about the mascarpone cheese. You can find Galbani and Zanetti mascarpone cheese in Fresco and Carrefour supermarkets and they cost somewhere around 6 or 7 Laris 250 grams and approximately 11 Laris 500 grams. There’s Milbeni mascarpone in Goodwill, which costs somewhere around 5 or 6 Laris 250 grams. And there was this Arborea mascarpone for 4 Laris or something like that in Carrefour and it was 250 grams and I just bought it, because it was my first time preparing Tiramisu and I didn’t really want to waste much money on ingredients the first time. If I made Tiramisu delicious, then I would buy more serious ingredients for the second time I made Tiramisu.

Then there were ladyfingers or Savogliardi or whatever you call it. I could not find them in Fresco that day, but I remember they had some of them. They are easier to find than heavy cream, of course. They are almost everywhere _ in large markets and supermarkets. They cost somewhere from 6 to 9, 200 grams and 400 grams respectively. The amount is about 20 and 30, I guess, I haven’t really checked. They are Italian ladyfingers and they are better than the usual ones, of course. And there was this sale in Carrefour and they cost 3. 50 Laris, I guess, and there were many of them, I guess, they were 800 grams or something, but of course they weren’t those Italian stuff and they were just low grade ladyfingers, just cookies, but they were cheap and many and I bought them for my first ever Tiramisu preparation.

So, in all, I had my ingredients in a pretty reasonable price and I was really satisfied with that, except for the heavy cream, which cost 10 Larisor something, but I guess, if there was heavy cream for 0. 5 Litres it would cost somewhere around 5 Laris and it would be really enough for my Tiramisu.

Well, this recipe is my second Tiramisu. This is a modified recipe of my first Tiramisu, as it didn’t have any eggs or Rum, and trust me, those two things really made a difference. And the first time I added a pinch of cloves and that was a really bad idea! When I tasted it, it was good, but then when I ate some other pieces, it tasted spicy and it was really spicy, if you want to know the truth! I thought for a long time remembering what I did wrong in making the cake, but I couldn’t think of anything that could make my cake taste really spicy. It was like I put some pepper in it. Then there was this moment and I remembered that I put a pinch of cloves in the mascarpone filling and I googled it and it said, that if it was too much, it would taste like pepper and it would taste like it more if there was some alcohol in the mixture, and I had alcohol in my espresso mixture, of course, and it made everything worse so to say. But still, it was my first Tiramisu, and it tasted not so bad after all and I ate it, of course. I was so pleased that I made Tiramisu, that I didn’t pay much attention to the spiciness, it was still good and I liked it. I couldn’t eat much with a bite though because of its spiciness.

Ingredients:

• Mascarpone cheese 250 grams, softened
• Egg, 1
• 1 ½ cup heavy cream
• Vanilla, 1 tsp
• Rum essence, 2 tbs
• 2 ½ cups really strong Espresso coffee
• White granulated sugar, 1/3 cup
• Ladyfingers, about 20-25

Preparation process

First of all, you should whip heavy cream. Whipping heavy cream takes just some minutes, about 3-5, it depends on what you’re using when whipping it and what speed you’re whipping it. it should have a fluffy consistency and you shouldn’t overwhip it, because in that case you will have butter and not a whipped cream. You’ll understand when it’s time to stop whisking and let the heavy cream rest. You should refrigerate it for about 15 minutes or more, and while the heavy cream being refrigerated, you can prepare other things for the cake.

You should have your mascarpone on a room temperature, so that it’s softened and easy to mix. Mix mascarpone, vanilla and granulated sugar well. Then add an egg yolk. If you want your Tiramisu to be a little more sweet, you can add more sugar.

You should prepare strong espresso coffee for your Tiramisu, too. For that I used more than 50 grams of espresso powder, I guess, because I really wanted it to be strong. I made espresso in my coffee machine and let it cool, then I added 2 tbs of Rum to it and mixed them.

I had 1 egg white left, so I just whisked it with coffee mixer until it was really white and fluffy and you know how it should be.

So, I took out my heavy whipped cream out of the fridge. I added small amount of heavy whipped cream to the mascarpone mixture and mixed those well together, so that the mixture would become more liquidy. Then I added that egg white to the mascarpone mixture and then I added the rest of the heavy cream. Now it was time to mix them together with a little carefulness. There’s this mixing thing _ you mix it from the center to the peripheries slowly and after some minutes you will mix them together and it will have a great consistency. And after that you will have to ensure that the filling of the cake is great and worth preparing it. So the filling is ready and you can have it ready for the preparation process.

Now it’s time to assemble the cake. Get your ladyfingers, cocoa powder, espresso and the mascarpone filling ready! To my mind, it’s better if you have a container for Tiramisu. Originally it is round, so maybe you want your cake to be of a round shape, it depends on you. I guess, it’s about the occasion. For the birthday you should definitely take round shape! But since the ladyfingers are shaped like that, I mean, they are long and narrow, they are better for the rectangular shape or something like that. So, it is easier to make rectangular Tiramisu than the round one, I guess.

Well, I had this rectangular shaped plastic container for my Tiramisu. I placed a plastic wrap in it, so that when the time came I could easily take my Tiramisu out and cut it into pieces. First of all, I should have placed the ladyfingers on the bottom. The thing is, you should put the ladyfinger into the espresso mixture for just a second and then you should place it in the container. There was place for 8 ladyfingers in my container as it seemed.

After the ladyfingers comes the mascarpone filling and after that you should sprinkle some cocoa powder and some espresso. And then you should place the ladyfingers and so on and so forth until you hit the top of the container. And at the top you sprinkle more cocoa powder and espresso and that’s it! the cake is done!

You should know, that eating Tiramisu right away is not a good idea, because it won’t be as tasty as some hours later. They say you should eat Tiramisu minimum after 4 hours of its preparation. And the more time passes, the more delicious it becomes, because everything mixes together, I mean the taste of all those things that were separately put together. If you ask me, you should probably eat Tiramisu the day after! And, of course, it should be in the fridge and it tastes like heaven when you take your Tiramisu out of the fridge and it’s cold like an ice-cream, but has those ladyfinger biscuits in it and I just love it, it’s amazing!

Tasting the Tiramisu

Well, I waited for 5 hours until I tasted my first ever Tiramisu. I must say, I was pretty amazed with it, because I didn’t really expect that it would be that delicious as I didn’t really know how to prepare it and it was my first time preparing it and I had not put any Rum in it or eggs. So, as I’ve mentioned it above, it tasted spicy and I was very surprised and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong as I had never eaten spicy Tiramisu anywhere and the recipe was very simple and it didn’t have any extra ingredients, so I couldn’t think of anything else that could have made that taste. But then I realized it was cloves and what could I do?! And I just ate that Tiramisu. It still tasted good. That was just that little spicy taste that it had. As I prepared my first Tiramisu and it was good, it’s in my cooking recipe list so I can prepare it anytime I want and I know that it will be good, because I know exactly how to make it.

Photo gallery