For the wine dinner we hosted at our home last month, I wanted to make a dessert that was easy to serve. We had enough guests that we couldn't fit them all at our dining room table, so we had folks split up between two tables in two separate rooms for dinner. Everyone reconvened in the living room for cheese and dessert. So in addition to Homemade Pecan Sandies, I served Individual Tiramisu that I could make ahead of time and hand out to guests seated on a couch.
This recipe is from The Everyday Baker by Abigail Dodge and it's meant to yield six servings that are made in glasses with a capacity of 10 to 12 ounces. I halved the size of the servings and made the tiramisus in five-ounce plastic cups.
There are three components to the recipe: vanilla sponge cake, coffee syrup, and mascarpone filling. You make the cake batter by beating eggs with brown sugar and vanilla until pale and tripled in volume, and folding in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt). You bake the cake in a 9-inch square pan and you end up with a perfectly flat layer that you can easily cut into neat cubes after the cake is cool. The coffee syrup is a mixture of water, sugar, Kahlúa, and instant espresso powder. The filling requires a bit of effort. You heat eggs, an egg yolk, brown sugar, Kahlúa, espresso powder, and salt in a double boiler until it reaches 170 degrees; take the mixture off the heat and beat it until cooled; and beat mascarpone, heavy cream, and vanilla to firm peaks and fold it into the cooled egg mixture.
To assemble the tiramisu, I dipped each cube of cake into the coffee syrup, placed a few into the bottom of a cup, spooned over some filling, and repeated with another layer of syrup-dipped cake and filling. I sprinkled some grated chocolate over the top of each tiramisu and put them in the fridge until it was time to serve dessert.
I thought that these desserts were cute and very good -- and while you could taste the Kahlúa, they were not too boozy. They were well received by our guests and I liked the small serving size that the fact that the tiramisu was light -- not too much to eat after a large meal accompanied by a lot of wine. I can't get too excited about these because it is just tiramisu, after all -- but I definitely consider this dessert a success and I would happily make and serve it again.
Recipe: "Individual Tiramisu" from The Everyday Baker by Abigail Dodge.
Previous Posts:
This recipe is from The Everyday Baker by Abigail Dodge and it's meant to yield six servings that are made in glasses with a capacity of 10 to 12 ounces. I halved the size of the servings and made the tiramisus in five-ounce plastic cups.
There are three components to the recipe: vanilla sponge cake, coffee syrup, and mascarpone filling. You make the cake batter by beating eggs with brown sugar and vanilla until pale and tripled in volume, and folding in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt). You bake the cake in a 9-inch square pan and you end up with a perfectly flat layer that you can easily cut into neat cubes after the cake is cool. The coffee syrup is a mixture of water, sugar, Kahlúa, and instant espresso powder. The filling requires a bit of effort. You heat eggs, an egg yolk, brown sugar, Kahlúa, espresso powder, and salt in a double boiler until it reaches 170 degrees; take the mixture off the heat and beat it until cooled; and beat mascarpone, heavy cream, and vanilla to firm peaks and fold it into the cooled egg mixture.
I thought that these desserts were cute and very good -- and while you could taste the Kahlúa, they were not too boozy. They were well received by our guests and I liked the small serving size that the fact that the tiramisu was light -- not too much to eat after a large meal accompanied by a lot of wine. I can't get too excited about these because it is just tiramisu, after all -- but I definitely consider this dessert a success and I would happily make and serve it again.
Recipe: "Individual Tiramisu" from The Everyday Baker by Abigail Dodge.
Previous Posts:
- "Baked Sunday Mornings: Blood Orange Tiramisu," March 15, 2015.
- "My Cakes Could Use a Pick Me Up: Tiramisu Cake," August 2, 2014.
- "Vegan Birthday Treats: Raspberry Tiramisu Cupcakes," December 20, 2012.
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