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Tiramisu

As one of the major dessert fiends at the Fort Collins office (and that’s saying a lot!!) I was elected to make this month’s recipe for Tiramisu. This comes to us from Michele Boglioni, one of our tour leaders and an honorary member of the Price family. “Tiramisu” in Italian means “pick-me-up,” so I think that means it’s the perfect mid- or post-ride snack—far better than any energy bar around! And it’s much easier to make than I had anticipated.

Be forwarned: Michele says, "Consumare con cautela, puo’ indurre a dipendenza!” Consume with caution or it can lead to addiction!

Here’s the recipe, for a 9-inch square pyrex dish:

• 3 Eggs
• 1 package of Ladyfingers
• 1 250 gram package of mascarpone (the containers I found had only 225 grams, so I got 2 and used just a scoop from the second, though you probably could get away with just the one package)
• Small cup of brewed espresso or coffee
• Approx. one cup of milk
• 3 Tablespoons of sugar
• Cocoa powder to sprinkle on top
• Optional: Amaretto cookies to crumble and sprinkle in between layers and on top
• Optional: ¼-cup Sherry

Separate the eggs and blend the yolks with the sugar. When the sugar is melted into the yolks, add the mascarpone and sherry (we didn’t have any sherry hanging around the office, so I used some Liquor de Oro—a liquor made from milk, from Chiloe Island, Chile! It worked fine with the other tastes in the dish). Blend well until smooth.

Heat the milk and add warm coffee so it looks like a latte—kind of brown but not a dark brown. You will be dipping the Ladyfingers in this mixture.

Whip the egg whites with a pinch of salt, until relatively stiff.

Gently add the egg whites to the mascarpone cream mixture, stirring just enough that it is all blended and there are small air bubbles—if you stir too much the egg whites will become runny.

Now you are ready to layer:
You’ll want to do a ‘dry run’ by placing the ladyfingers in the dish to see how they need to go so they will completely cover the bottom of the dish. You’ll need to cut some to make this happen. Then take them out of the dish and start dipping!

Quickly dip the ladyfingers into the coffee/milk mixture and place in the bottom of the pan. Dipping is a trick—do it quickly because you only want the outside of the ladyfinger to be moist, not the whole thing soaked (you want the cream to soak the ladyfinger as it sits in the ‘fridge).

After one layer of dipped ladyfingers, pour enough of the mascarpone and egg mixture to completely cover the ladyfingers by a centimeter or so. Crumble some of the amaretto cookies in your hand and sprinkle on top.
Add a second layer of dipped ladyfingers, and another layer of the mascarpone cream mixture. Repeat until you reach the top of the pan (this recipe made just the two layers in my 9-inch pyrex). Sprinkle more amaretto crumbs if you like, and the cocoa powder to completely cover or just to make a decorative design.

Put in the fridge for at least 6 or 8 hours so that it is dry and a little cakey, not super soupy.

Eat.

Enjoy.
Eat some more.
Exercise so you can eat some more!

-Sarah