A big thank you to my wonderful blogging buddy Megan at My Baking Adventures, who picked Tiramisu Cake, on pages 266-268 of Dorie's book Baking From My Home To Yours, as our first Tuesdays with Dorie recipe of May. You can visit Megan's site for the recipe if you would like to try this delicious cake and don't have Dorie's book.
Even though I'm not a big coffee drinker I love tiramisu, but haven't had it in ages, so this was a fun pick to rekindle a little coffee love. Speaking of love, in the recipe preface in the book, Dorie mentions the popularity of Tiramisu in the 1990s and the movie Sleepless in Seattle, which just happens to be my favorite movie, I absolutely adore the movie and the soundtrack. I am not the kind of person to watch a movie more than once, but Sleepless in Seattle gets me every time. Sigh.
I substituted some instant French vanilla nut coffee instead of the instant espresso powder, couldn't find it anywhere locally. Finding the mascarpone was quite a chore, after many phone calls to grocers, where either a. they had no idea who or what mascarpone cheese was, or b. they were out of stock, or c. I was rudely asked if I meant mass-cup-own cheese because they had that but not mascarpone, I finally located a store with mascarpone in stock and sent my husband for an 8 ounce tub. Now I've had mascarpone quite a few times, but it's not something I buy that often, it's usually an impulse buy because I see it in the 'cheese island' and think 'oh, haven't had that in a while, I'll figure out something to do with it' and toss it in my cart. I don't think I've ever even looked at the cost of it before, I thought it would be 3-4 dollars for an 8 ounce tub, well, when my husband called from the store, saying he finally found it and how much did I want, I asked him to get two tubs, one for this recipe, and one for me to get creative with, not realizing that this little grocery charged $8.00 for an 8 ounce tub, that's $1 an ounce! Sheesh! And it wasn't even imported from Italy or anything. Oh-well.
I loved the Kamora Coffee Liquor that I bought specifically for this recipe. I'm not an alcohol fan, never have been -- just don't really like the taste, but this Kamora stuff with a little milk is quite delicious.
This cake baked up in less than the time specified in the recipe, I'd say about 17 minutes. I recently replaced my 8 and 9 inch round cake pans, so got to use my new Chicago Metallic 9 inch pans, at first I was a little nervous because the recipe calls for a 9 by 2 inch pan and I only have 9 by 1 1/2 inch -- but they did the trick with no overflow, thank goodness! Let me apologize for the frosting and decoration job, I know my cake looks pretty sloppy! Even though I had very stiff peaks in my cream, after I added it to the coffee syrup it became quite soft (even after refrigeration) was not that easy to decorate with. I did some cinnamon heart stencils on top, and a few chocolate chips for good measure. I did not add the chocolate to the middle of the cake, just wasn't feeling the chocolate vibe tonight. Results? Although my cake didn't turn out that easy on the eyes, it was very delicious, and thoroughly enjoyed :) This is probably my new favorite TWD cake -- yum!
