Daring Bakers February: Tiramisu

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

The cookie dough: a lot lighter than your chocolate chip in a tube!

Wow. I am posting this very late, even though I made the delicious cake about 2 weeks ago. I’m going to chalk it up to photography once more, unfortunately. So I don’t have a final photo, because even though there is a piece sitting in my fridge, I just can’t put this thing off any longer!

Cookie dough ready to pipe out

This was a pretty intense, from-scratch recipe. I made mascarpone cheese, zabaglione (coffee-based syrup-like stuff), pastry cream, whipped cream and savoiardi biscuits, which are meringue-ish ladyfingers.

I don't know how, but I piped that dough real pretty!  

I will absolutely make this tiramisu again, although next time I might dip my ladyfingers into something a little more punchy than the sweetened coffee concoction. Some Daring Bakers used fruit juice, and the recipe said to use espresso or marsala. My mum suggested I try it with Grand Marnier, and I think amaretto would be pretty delightful too.

Macro lens means a good view of bubbles in the ladyfingers.

My favourite part was the ladyfingers, or savoiardi, which are mostly egg, but lightly flavoured with lemon zest as well. They were not super special on their own, but when smothered in a pool of zabaglione-pastry cream-whipping cream, their lightness provided great balance to the cake. Next time though I will probably pipe the cookie batter in a shape that is more conducive to fitting my cake dish. I didn’t think I had enough cookies for my 9x9 inch pan, so used a couple of large circular ramekins instead, breaking the cookies to mostly fit inside.

This part was kind of complicated. I guess I don't have my sifting skills down yet.

If you’re interested in making a tiramisu, plan your time wisely. It was a multi-day project, including making mascarpone cheese from scratch. The final result was absolutely delicious, but I felt a little guilty eating so much of it myself…

Voila! A little overcooked, but still delightful.

Daring Bakers November: Cannoli

In preparation for this month's challenge, I went to Lina's Italian Market and tried one of their Sicilian Cannolo.

Mmm, it was scrumptious! The pastry shell was dense, slightly sweet and flaky all at once, and the sweet ricotta filling had a kick (brandy?) that offset the richness. Somehow I was able to eat the whole thing. Then, I embarked on my own cannoli journey...

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

I made the dough with cheap red wine instead of sweet marsala cooking wine, which I couldn't find. The dough is pinkish thanks to the wine, and I think that is part of the reason they were far more tender than they're supposed to be.

I used a cup to cut out circles, and then ran them through the pasta maker again to make them into ovals.

The dough, wrapped around metal cannoli forms. The recipe said to use egg white to seal, but I used soy milk and it worked perfectly.

The first cannolo frying...

This one popped off the cannoli form, I think because I only sealed it with water.

Cooling the forms so I can remove them from the shells.

Finished cookin'!

Lovely blistering of the pastry.

A beater from the filling-making process. I thought I took photos of the ricotta that I made from scratch but I guess not. It was wonderful, though! I combined ricotta with sugar, cinnamon, amaretto, and chocolate chips.

I meant to make a nice little finale photo out of the finished product. But I got so frustrated using my piping bag that I just took a shot and ate one of 'em. The chocolate chips I used were too big to fit through the tip of the bag and a huge mess ensued. Sigh...

I also fried up all the dough scraps and dusted them with icing sugar, mmm.