I love cooking flavourful dishes. Usually for me that involves ginger and garlic and as many other spices as I can find. There are no spices in this recipe – but the lovely combination of coffee-soaked sponge, chocolate, mascarpone, cream and a tiny bit of orange zest is simply amazing – a great way to finish a meal with family and/or friends.
Traditional Tiramisu recipes use good quality espresso and as it’s an evening dish, we use our wonderful Organic Honduras Decaf, so we don’t spend the rest of the night wide awake.
Most Tiramisu recipes make the topping from eggs, but this delicious recipe uses mascarpone and ricotta cheese, plus some double cream to create a light and tasty alternative (but of course you can use eggs if you wish).
TIRAMISU RECIPE
This recipe will make SIX sensible servings. My glass dish is 15cm long x 12cm wide and 5.5cm deep.
Once made, its best if it stays in the fridge for a few hours or overnight before serving, so ideally plan ahead and make this the day before you want to serve it.
Ingredients:
- Sponge fingers – at least enough to cover the base of the dish once, or if you have a much deeper dish, you can do a double layer of sponge (you may need more espresso)
- One cold double espresso made with our superb Organic Honduras Decaf
- A single capful of espresso liqueur such as Kahlua
- 100gm Mascarpone
- 80gm Ricotta Cheese
- 250ml of Double Cream
- Zest from one fresh orange
- About 40gm of grated dark chocolate (I use green & blacks organic 85% dark)
Method:
- Make the double espresso and put aside to cool.
espresso
- Put ¾ of the double cream (about 200ml of the 250) and half the grated chocolate in a small steel saucepan and put on a very low heat for just a minute or so – you don’t want to boil the cream, but it needs to get just warm enough to completely melt the chocolate. Give it a stir as it warms up. Put on one side to cool a bit once the chocolate is melted and stirred into the cream.
- Once the espresso is cool, add a single shot (5ml of espresso liqueur) to the espresso and then pour the mixture into a separate small dish that’s big enough to dunk the sponge fingers one at a time.
- Most sponge fingers have one side hard and crusty – dunk the hard side in the espresso mixture and then lay hard side down in the bottom of the Tiramisu dish to create a complete sponge layer. Break fingers in bits where you need to, to make sure the whole dish is covered.
- Pour the remaining espresso over the sponge eliminating any dry bits – use more espresso if you need to, but all the espresso mixture should be soaked into the sponge – you don’t really want much espresso awash that has not soaked in.
- Once the cream/chocolate mixture is coolish, pour that over the sponge and spread to make an even layer.
Double cream with melted Chocolate
- Optional – at this point you can, if you wish and if your bowl is plenty deep enough, add another layer of sponge fingers soaked with espresso mixture as previously done with the first layer. Suggest cross-cross the new layer at a different angle to the first layer.
- Mix the mascarpone, ricotta and remaining double cream in a bowl using a hand blender. Pour and/or scrape this mixture into the Tiramisu dish to cover the existing layers and spread reasonably evenly.
- Now for the topping – sprinkle some of the remaining grated chocolate evenly over the top and then sprinkle or scrape the grated orange zest trying to get an even covering, and then finish off with the last remaining grated chocolate.
- Put the dish in the fridge and leave overnight, OR if you are in a hurry – put it in the freezer for half an hour!
