I was on a mission, or a conquest. I wanted to make and eat a delicious tiramisu. But what do you do when you don’t like or drink coffee and cannot enjoy this world renown italian dessert in its original version?
I was well decided to give it a try and bought half a kilo of mascarpone from my Italian grocer. The previous times I had bought mascarpone, I went nowhere close to a tiramisu. I just kept using that mascarpone for other things, often radically different. That way I discovered that mascarpone makes a great cake icing: the taste is light (much lighter than butter cream), a bit tangy, and in terms of practicality, it is super easy to spread. If you want to know more, follow this link.
Back to my tiramisu tale (yes, we are getting there). Since I was not going to convert to coffee overnight (I did try a couple times without much success), I browsed through a number of recipes to get a bit of background to the dessert and made up my mind: it was going to be a lemon curd tiramisu!
Here it is!
The execution is super simple, no need to be a great cook, so get some mascarpone and some savoiardi (sponge fingers) and get going!
There is room for changes to adapt to taste. Tiramisu recipes, even the coffee version, are very versatile. I ended up also doing a small coffee tiramisu for my husband who loooooves that dessert and his coffee!
A few tips:
- Tiramisu recipes also contain cream, the ratio can be adapted if you don’t have exactly the right amount;
- You may use alcohol or not. If not, you will need a sugar syrup to soak your biscuits in. I make 1/2 L to a litre at the time and keep it in a glass bottle. Alternatively you can find some ready made versions in some deli or specialised shops.
- Do not forget the almonds, they make the tiramisu by bringing this added crunch and taste.
My lemon curd tiramisu, the concept:
The recipe can be found on its own page (lemon curd tiramisu). Here below is the concept:
This lemon curd tiramisu is a fresh tangy delightful dessert! Just writing about it makes me smile. This dessert happened just one day while wanting to do a tiramisu which is not coffee based.
The recipe is super easy. Serves 12. Depending on the dish you use, you may have a bit of leftover of the lemon curd or mascarpone mix.
Ingredients
For the lemon curd
- 3 eggs
- The zest of 2 lemons (previously washed)
- The juice of the two lemons
- 1 cup of white sugar
- 1/2 cup of butter
For the tiramisu
- 500 g of mascarpone
- 400 ml cream to be whipped to soft peaks
- 1/4 cup of sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- savoiardi (or sponge fingers biscuits), 1 to 2 packet (20-30 biscuits)
- Almond flakes
- Sugar syrup. You only need about 1/2 cup here.
- a few tablespoons of a liquor (fruit based) if desired.
Tip: if you don’t have any sugar syrup, dissolve 1 cup of white sugar in 1/4 L of water in a saucepan (roughly 1 cup), let it reduce until syrupy, it will keep for month in a glass bottle. You can make larger batches. You can use it for a number of desserts, cocktails (ti’punch for example) or sorbets.
Method
For the lemon curd:
Melt the butter with the lemon juice and sugar in a saucepan. Add the lemon zest. In the meanwhile, beat the eggs slightly in a large bowl. Once the butter is melted, slowly transfer the liquid hot mixture to the eggs while whisking continuously. The mix will start thickening, transfer back to the saucepan and place on low heat until it thickens but without reaching boiling point. Transfer to a clean bowl. The mixture will thicken further when cooling down. If you have cooked the curd too much and got a little bit of scrambled eggs, pass it through a sieve.
For the tiramisu:
- Choose a dish wide enough and tall enough to enable the layering. At least 12 cm high to allow for consistent layers.
- If you have a kitchen Aid or similar, it is time to get it out, if not, a whisk will work perfectly. Mix the mascarpone and egg yolks until smooth and fully combined. Whip the cream to soft peaks, adding the sugar slowly towards the end. Combine first 1/4 of the whipped cream with the mascarpone, then combine the rest.
- In a deep plate, mix 1/4 cup of hot water with 1/4 cup of sugar syrup and our chosen spirits (2 tbsp).
- The bottom layer is made with the savoiardi. One at the time, place a biscuit in the syrup mix for 5 seconds until moist but not crumbling ad transfer to the bottom of the dish. Repeat to cover the bottom, you will most likely need to cut the biscuits to size to fit the corners or fill up the voids.
- Cover with mascarpone, about 1.5 cm thick. Now, add a layer of lemon curd (1 cm thick maximum).
- Repeat the biscuit layering stage making sure you soak them before placing them down. If you run out of the soaking liquid, make a new quantity. Add a layer of mascarpone, then a layer of lemon curd. This second layer of lemon curd can be thicker (up to 2 cm). Now place the remaining of the mascarpone mix on top in a little dome structure, using a round knife or chop stick , lightly swirl through the mascarpone layer with the lemon curd right underneath.
- Toast some almond flakes in a frypan or under the grill (don’t forget them!) and place on top of the tiramisu. Don’t forget that this steps makes the dessert happen!
Tip: if you have too much mascarpone mix, place in ramequins and cover, keep in the fridge, it will make a nice little treat for someone in the coming days. Lemon curd keeps in the fridge in a plastic box for a week or so.
This chestnut raspberry tiramisu is born from having chestnut, raspberries and raspberry coulis and mascarpone. It is not strictly speaking a tiramisu, but as I was looking through an Italian cookbook, it seems that desserts made out of mascarpone are called tiramisu, hence the name.
The previous day or in the first part of the morning, you need to prepare the pastry dough and the jellified coulis.
I used a pull apart cake tin and silicone (for the jelly) of 19 cm diameter.
Ingredients:
Pastry disk:
- 60 g soft butter
- 15 g icing sugar
- 15 g almond meal
- 1 teaspoon of raspberry liquor
- 70 g flour
- 1/3 teaspoon baking powder
You will have just enough for the disk.
Raspberry coulis:
- 500 mL of coulis passed through a sieve (i.e. close to 750 mL not sieved)
- 3 1/2 leaves of gold strength gelatine ( use 3 leaves for 500 mL as a reference)
Chestnut fill/mousse
- 250 g chestnut puree, unsweetened (if it is already sweetened, remove the sugar syrup below)
- 1/2 cup sugar syrup
- 400 g mascarpone
- about 75-100 g broken down frozen (leave them frozen) raspberries
- 90 g softened (not melted!!!) butter
- Gelatine (here we don’t need as much as if fully liquid), 4 leaves. Now, you may need to adapt this quantity, I did not put any in mine relying on the butter and mascarpone, but has to use the freezer to make it just solid enough even so, it has no holding when it starts to unfreeze, this is why I advise adding gelatine.
Method:
- For the short crust pastry, mix all ingredients together, make sure it is well mixed without overworking the dough thought. Wrap in cell film an rest for a while (3-4 hours or overnight) in the fridge. Heat up oven to 170°C. Roll the dough quite thin (3 mm) over a sheet of baking paper, use the bottom part of the round tin to cut out the circle base, trim excesses. Place that sheet of baking paper and circle of raw dough. on a baking sheet and with a fork make small holes all over. Bake it to a beautiful golden colour. Remove from the oven, transfer on a cooling rack by sliding the baking paper.
- For the soft raspberry jelly: place leaves of gelatine in cold water. Warm up the coulis, remove from the heat. Drain the gelatine from the water and mix with the coulis with a whisk until fully dissolved. Using the silicone mould (you can use any other mould of similar size, it is easier if a bit smaller than larger), line with wrap film (use butter to help it stick to the tin walls. Pour the coulis and place the whole thing in the fridge overnight or for a few hours.
- Chestnut mousse : to prepare just before assembling. Place leaves of gelatine in cold water. Warm up sugar syrup. Drain the gelatine from the water and mix with sugar syrup until dissolved. Place with chestnut puree, soft butter and mascarpone. Mix well. Add the raspberry pieces.
- Construction time: the disk at the bottom, the jellified raspberry coulis over the disk, then the mascarpone-chestnut-raspberry mousse. Cell wrap on top and in the fridge!
Allow to set for 4 hours.Check 1.5 hour before serving, if not set yet, you may want to place it in the freezer for a bit.
How to call a dessert which is no exactly what you intend to do? Lets call this one a chestnut raspberry tiramisu.
The background
I had all these chestnuts I wanted to use. The kids and I got excited and after having eaten a whole bad of them somehow, the second bag was going untouched for a while. This is a classic situation in a family, isn’t it? So I used most of them to make a chestnut puree. I had in mind to do a beautiful chestnut raspberry layered cake. I also had this great pot of mascarpone in the fridge and had been going through the cookbook “80 Authentic Italian Sweet Treats, Cakes and Desserts” by Laura Zavan.
Now, a very important factor, it is very cold in my kitchen at the moment (for those who don’t know, we have been going through renovations). It would have felt like around 5°C when I prepared the dessert wrapped in many layers.
The process….
- I created a short crust pastry, let it rest for a while in the fridge, though I could have left it on the kitchen bench considering the freezing weather this weekend. I rolled the dough quite thin (3 mm), baked it to a beautiful golden colour.
- I used a raspberry coulis I had in the freezer to create my bottom “layer”. Obviously I needed to add some gelatine. I prepared that step at the same time as the dough. My advice to you is check your volumes and don’t put too much gelatine. It was a bit too jellified to my taste.
- I wanted to obtain a chestnut mousse but using the mascarpone. I mixed 250 g of chestnut puree, initially 200 g of mascarpone, 50 g of softened butter. At this stage, I realised I had not though it through well enough and that my dessert was not going to be what I intended. I used the rest of the mascarpone (400 g total), some sugar syrup (I keep some handy in the kitchen) and 50-100 g of pieces of raspberry frozen. I was betting on the mascarpone and butter to set.
- Construction time (a bit like leggos!), the disk at the bottom, the jellified raspberry coulis over the disk, then the mascarpone-chestnut-raspberry mousse. Cell wrap on top and in the fridge!
I didn’t know if it would have set overnight but after a few hours, it had not moved and I was running out of time. I placed the dessert in the freezer where it set just on time.
Result:
In the end, it was quite good. Next time, if there is one, I would add a little gelatine to the mascarpone.
I had also prepared a backup dessert, a chocolate cake with roasted strawberries. As a result, we had plenty to chose from and a fair amount of left overs. Did you know, some desserts freeze really well? You can have a nice finish to your meal in no time!
