For a sweet toothed bong like me a visit to a pastry shop is always like opening the gates of heaven to me. Whether it is a simple rum ball, a black forest pastry or a tart, pastry shop has for me been the promised land of bliss for me. One of my favorites is an Italian dessert, which literally means pick me up or cheer me up. The tiramisu which in Italian literally means to pick me up is a coffee flavoured dessert that is now incorporated with other ingredients or cooking techniques to make various cakes and other desserts. It is essentially made of layers of sugar, mascarpone cheese, and eggs whipped together and flavoured with cocoa.
Today’s food journey will be about a dessert which will celebrate this popular Italian dessert with another popular French one –the mousse. The mousse is a French food both sweet and savoury, and meaning foam is essentially prepared by infusing air bubbles to give a light airy texture. Our food journey today is a tiramisu cheese cake. Thus this will give us a creamy layered dessert incorporating the best of the two styles of cooking.
As always our food journey will begin at the pantry and the cooking of this dessert involves creating 7 distinct elements and then combining them. These are the cheese, the white mix, the yolk mix, the gelatin mix, the soaking syrup a sponge cake and the toppings. The ingredients for making them individually so as to combine and make serving for 6-8 people are:
Topping:
Dark chocolate chips
Dark cocoa powder- 100 gms
Cheese:
Whipped cream- 200 gms
Mascarpone cheese at room temperature- 400 gm
White mix:
Sugar- 70 gms
Egg whites-2
Gelatin Mix:
cold water
Gelatin powder 15 gms
Soaking Syrup:
Sugar 50 gm
Water 50 ml
Strong espresso- 2 shots
Sponge cake
Yolk batter
4 egg yolks
70g cake flour
30g cornstarch
40g milk
40g canola oil (or melted butter)
½ tea spoon vanilla extract
White batter
4 egg whites
80g granulated sugar
½ tea spoon. salt
To begin cooking, we will start with making the syrup. If You have espresso 2 shots will suffice as mentioned above, or you can make it from a bag of instant coffee and boiling it in water and filtering it out to about 2 shots worth of liquid. Now in a bowl take the water and add the sugar in it, bringing it to boil till the syrup starts forming an dad the coffee shots into it now. Leave it to cool and set aside for later.
Now in cold water add the gelatin powder mix and let it to sit and bloom so as to make a good thick gelatin mix
Use a double boiler if you have one, else set up a large pan with water with a smaller shallow container inside. Once the water comes to boil in the outer pan, start beating the egg whites and sugar using a spatula, till sugar dissolves evenly and the mix becomes too hot to touch. Now, remove from the heat and keep beating till stiff peaks start forming. Cool this and set aside for later use. Now do the same with the egg yolk and sugar over the double boiler. A pale yellow and thick mix will result. Cool this also and set aside for later.
Now mix the mascarpone cheese and whipped cream and beat till it thickens evenly. Add the yolk mix into this cheese mix and beat to evenly blend in the mix. Now using the spatula, fold in the egg white mix into the cheese mix. Now melt the gelatin mix by microwaving for about 15 seconds and add into the cheese mix, slowly folding it into it using the spatula. This is our tiramisu mix
While this is all happening we would have set the sponge cake to bake. To do that we first mix the white batter elements in a mixing bowl and beat till soft peaks form. In another mixing bowl similarly mix the yolk batter ingredients and whisk till they are even and feel heavy handed. Now fold 1/3 of the meringue or the beaten white batter mix into the yolk mix. Now transfer this folded mix onto the rest of the meringue and fold so that plenty of air bubbles form within. Now preheat an oven to 150 0 C, and transfer the folded meringue into a baking tin with the bottom covered by a greased baking sheet. Fill the tin only about 2/3rds so that the cake may rise when we bake it. Bake in the oven for about an hour.
Once the cake is baked and cooled, slice it into a few slices of about 2 cms thickness, and place one slice in a loose bottomed cake pan. Now damp it well with the soaking syrup and spread about half of the tiramisu mix prepared earlier on top of it. Place another layer of cake, soak it with the syrup and then spread the remaining tiramisu mix. Cover the top with a cling film and set in the freezer for at least 4 hours preferably overnight. Garnish and serve.
Like most of my food escapades, even this one merits my mother’s secret ingredients of love and smile. So layer in your love with the tiramisu, along with air add in your smiles and make this a wonderful dessert. Bon appétit.
