Tiramisu

Hi everyone!

This is our family's take on tiramisu. I think it's fairly standard, but I'll try to add some value by going into the little details that are often left out from recipes.

You'll need these ingredients...

• 100g of fine grained sugar
• 4 medium sized eggs
• 500g of Mascarpone
• lemon (optional)
• Amaretto - always use Disaronno
• Cointreau or Cognac (optional)
• 2 cups of strong coffee or espresso
• 150-200g of soft lady fingers or sponge fingers
• cocoa powder

...and the following equipment:

• electric mixer
• 2 baking bowls
• spatula
• rectangular dish (e.g. Pyrex)
• a large coffee bowl or cup
• small sieve

Before you begin: I've found it really helps to have eggs and mascarpone at room temperature, that way they mix well and don't clump.

1. Separate the egg yolk and egg white into bowls A and B (yup, that's what I'm going to call them) respectively. Make sure that no egg yolk gets into bowl B because it will make it very hard or impossible to whisk the egg white into snow.
2. Add the sugar to bowl A and beat the ingredients with a mixer until you get a smooth, bright yellow mixture. If you're using brown instead of white sugar obviously it won't brighten as much.
3. Add the mascarpone spoon by spoon, and keep on mixing until very smooth.
4. Squeeze a little bit of lemon juice (12 drops or so) into the mixture and mix until integrated. This step is optional.
5. Add the Amaretto according to your taste (I use about 4 cl) into bowl A. Optionally, you can also add Cointreau and/or Cognac. Don't pour too much liquid in there, otherwise the mixture will become runny.
6. In bowl B whip the egg whites with the mixer (clean it first!) into snow.
7. Add a spoon of snow in bowl B to the mixture in bowl A, and use the spatula to delicately fold [1] it in. Repeat until you have integrated all the snow. This will make the mixture much lighter.
8. Prepare the coffee in the coffee bowl and add some Amaretto (4-6cl) to it.
9. Very briefly dip [2] the ladyfingers into the coffee and cover the bottom of the rectangular dish with them. Cover the ladyfingers with a layer of the mixture in bowl A. Repeat this step once.
10. Put the cocoa into the sieve and cover the top layer of the dish in cocoa. If you put the Tiramisu into the fridge (this will also make the tiramisu a little firmer), you can also do the cocoa sprinkling just before serving, which will give it a fresher appearance.

[1]: This lady shows quite well how to fold egg white snow into a mixture.

[2]: By "dip very briefly" I mean submerge for no longer than one to two seconds. The ladyfingers should not be drenched in coffee otherwise your tiramisu will develop a pool of liquid at the bottom once it's finished. If they're still a little hard don't worry because they will soften up once they're covered by the mixture.