Tiramisú

Tiramisú, or, translated from Italian, ‘pull me up’ cake is one of the many Italian recipes that are simple yet ingenious. But the seemingly simple way of making it can be quite misleading. There are, of course, some tricks one needs to know to make it right. And unless you are lucky enough to have an Italian Grandma who confides the shared-by-generations secrets in you, you easily find yourself frustrated and demotivated from the result of your effort that doesn’t quite meet the high standards of Italian cooking.

In this case though luck was on my site when I came across the perfect recipe. It happened in the peculiar way only life can conceive in the time when we lived in Italy. I didn’t have an Italian Grandma and even though food is for Italians along with football top talking topic, not excluding men, like the ones who won’t sell you a vegetable or a piece of meat without pulling some cooking recommendations out of their sleeves, the way of making a good Italian tiramisu was for long concealed from me. Until my English friend visited us from Prague and brought me a perfect Italian cookbook that, with a genuine generosity, shares old Grandma’s secrets. I have tried many recipes from this book and all of them were successful and helped me to bring authentic Italian cuisine to our dining table, a thing you simply have to do once you lived in Italy.

So here is my recipe for those of you who, like me, are Italian lovers. Just be aware that once you start eating the ‘pull me up’ cake, it’s hard to stop and that it is better to resist and wait till next day to eat tiramisú as it needs time for its taste to mingle and develop.

Ingredients

• 200 g Savoiardi  cookies 
• 500 g mascarpone
• 200 g cream
• 5 tbs brown sugar
• 4 egg yolks
• 4 tbs strong espresso
• 4 tbs amaretto liqueur
• cocoa powder
• raspberries and/or blueberries (optional)

Method

1. Whip the cream with a half of the sugar.
2. Beat the egg yolks with the rest of the sugar to make a thick cream.
3. Add the mascarpone slowly into the cream, mix it well and then add the whipped cream carefully.
4. Arrange half of the Savoiardi cookies in a form.
5. Sprinkle them with the mixture of espresso and amaretto (not too much).
6. Spread half of the cream on it.
7. Arrange the rest of the Savoiardi on the cream layer.
8. Sprinkle again with the espresso – amaretto mixture and spread the rest of the cream on the top.
9. Powder the top with cocoa powder. Decorate with berries (raspberries, blueberries) if you wish.
10. Put it in the fridge and let it rest at least one hour but preferably till the next day.