The Daring Bakers Challenge, February 2010: 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.

I haven't been baking as much lately. It has been a little strange, but I think I just don't "need" to as much as before. My new job is keeping me pretty occupied, and most importantly, making me think again. In fact, I find myself excited enough about upcoming work related challenges that I don't feel as much of a strong need to channel my productive energy into flour and sugar. It actually took quite a bit of effort for me to motivate myself to get started with the February challenge. 

This was actually quite the laborious task. I had always wanted to make tiramisu, but it just seemed like a little too much work for something that the Italian bakery down the street already does quite well. Going forward, I think I am going to leave the tiramisu to the bakery. While it was quite satisfying to pull of such a complicated dessert in my own kitchen, I am not sure that mine will ever taste as good as their's. Each component that I made tasted good on its own, but when put together I felt that the dessert lacked that rich coffee flavor that is so prominent in the best tiramisus. 

The interesting thing about tiramisu, is that none of the individual components are particularly difficult. You need pastry cream, whipped cream, some mascarpone and lady fingers, espresso and zabaglione. Simple right? It's simple when you only need to make one or two of those items. Making all of them for a simple dessert means that tiramisu prep can take days. 

A few days before I planned to assemble the tiramisu I prepared the lady fingers and the mascarpone cheese. I think that home made mascarpone is quickly becoming one of my favorites. I took the leftovers that did not make it into the tiramisu and whipped them in my stand mixer with a handful of chives. Voila - home made chive cream cheese for bagels! 

The pastry cream, whipped cream, mascarpone and zabaglione come together very easily with a rubber spatula. My mixture was a creamy white color with a very runny, soupy texture. I think the heat in my kitchen caused it to liquefy some. The mixture did firm up some when spread into my pan and cooled in the fridge, but melted again pretty quickly when removed from the fridge for serving. 

I selected some three inch spring form pans to assemble my tiramisu(s). The pans were only deep enough for two layers of ladyfingers and cream, so I had a lot of ingredients left over. To assemble, prepare a mixture of warm espresso and rum extract. Quickly dip the lady fingers into the espresso mixture and then use them to line the bottom of the pan. Cover the layer of lady fingers with the pastry cream/mascarpone mixture. Repeat with another layer of lady fingers and pastry cream. 

Once assembled, the tiramisus to the fridge to chill overnight. This step is necessary for the desserts to firm up enough to cut. Once tiramisus have hardened enough, remove them from the fridge, garnish them with some cocoa powder, slice, and serve!

Recipes after the jump!

Bagels, Homemade Mascarpone, and Olive Tapenade

Early last week, I think maybe Monday or Tuesday night, A and I had a conversation that went something like this:

A: You know, we haven't had bagels in a really long time. Maybe we should do bagels next week.
Me: I didn't know that you like bagels. I eat them all the time, but never bring them home.
A: I love bagels!
Me: Okay, I'm sure I can make bagels. I will make you some next weekend.

A paused for a moment, looking at me a little strangely.

Me: Wait, you didn't think we would buy bagels from a store did you?
A: Well... kind of?
Me: How long have we been married? You think I would buy something that I could bake and pass up the opportunity to try a new recipe?
A: I wasn't sure. Maybe?
Me: Ugh, don't worry. I won't make a mess of the kitchen.

And with that, the matter was settled. Bagels would be made for Sunday brunch.

Of course bagels alone wouldn't be enough - I needed to prepare something to put on them. It was another traveling week for A, so during the week I was left alone to play in the kitchen. Lately I have been looking into making home-made cheese (more on that in a later post) and found some easy instructions for home-made mascarpone. Perfect! Who needs Philadelphia when you can make your own Italian version.

A craving for olives helped me finish the menu. Olive tapenade would be the perfect compliment to the mascarpone and is super easy to make. Wolfgang Puck's black and green olive tapenade is my go-to recipe. It is simple and flexible. The recipe specifies picholine and Nicoise olives, but the recipe tastes just as good with any other marinated olive. I have used Kalamata and Manzanilla olives with good results. Leftover tapenade can also be turned into a puttanesca sauce... just add a sauteed onion and some canned diced tomatoes.

I turned to the Bread Baker's Apprentice for my bagel recipe. I had never baked bagels before, so I thought that Peter Reinhart's almost fool-proof recipes would be a good place to start. He provides a formula for a chewy, "New York" style bagel that is boiled first, then baked. He claims that the secret to getting the flavor right is to "alkalize" the water with baking soda before boiling the bagels.


Since it was my first try, I stuck with plain bagels. I figured I should master the plain recipe first so that I don't waste toppings and inedible product. Overall, my first bagels were a success. A enjoyed them, and told me he would never consider purchasing bagels again. I was almost satisfied (being a perfectionist can suck at times!). The internal texture and flavor was good, but the outside of the bagel was a little chewier than I would have liked. I think more research on perfecting the bagel is needed!