A few weeks ago, my dad visited Treviso in Italy. He went to a restaurant called Le Beccherie, to which the invention of tiramisu is attributed. They gave out little recipe cards with the original recipe on it to the customers, which honestly I'm surprised they’re willing to share!
As soon as my dad gave me this recipe card, I decided to try it out, and the results were so good (if I may say so myself.) However, there were a few things that I wanted to tweak before writing a blog post about this recipe, so this week I made it for a second time. This recipe is genuinely SO easy!
When I first read the recipe, the quantity of each ingredient seemed huge, so I halved everything, and it was perfect for a 22-inch round tin. This was my amended ingredients list:
6 egg yolks
250g sugar (you could actually use less than this, as it does turn out quite sweet)
500g mascarpone
30 savoiardi biscuits
Coffee
Cocoa powder
The recipe uses savoiardi biscuits, and since Tesco only sold normal ladyfinger biscuits, that’s what I used the first time round. This time, however, I wanted to get as authentic as I could, so I decided to make the savoiardi biscuits myself. This is the recipe I used:
Making these biscuits was really quick and easy! The recipe doesn’t specify the length that you should pipe each biscuit, so I just eyeballed it. It really was a moment of pride when I counted how many biscuits I had piped with all my batter, and it turned out to be the same number as the recipe said it made. It’s the small things in life…!
If your biscuits are not particularly uniform in shape and size (i.e. mine), it doesn’t really matter because they won’t be visible in the tiramisu. What a win-win!
I would advise making these the day before (or at least a good few hours before) you make the tiramisu, so that they have plenty of time to dry and set.
The next step (or first if you’re using store-bought ladyfinger biscuits) to making the tiramisu is making some coffee, so that it has time to cool down before you need to use it. The recipe doesn’t specify how much coffee, but you can always make more if you realise you haven’t made enough!
The next step is to whisk the egg yolks and sugar, using a stand mixer or electric whisk.
Once you’ve whisked them enough, it should look something like this:
You can now add in the mascarpone. Keep whisking until the mixture has fully come together and becomes really creamy.
Now it’s time to put the tiramisu together. Put your coffee into a bowl, as this will make it easier to soak the biscuits. Soak each savoiardi biscuit in the coffee, but make sure you don’t do this for too long. One quick dip on each side of the biscuit is enough!
As soon as you’ve soaked the biscuit, place it into the tin straight away. The biscuits become soft very quickly, which makes them much harder to move around.
Once you have laid out all the biscuits you can fit in the tin, use broken up pieces of biscuit (soaking them in the coffee too) to fill in all the gaps. I won't lie, it doesn’t exactly look STUNNING at this point. However, I decided to go for evenness over aesthetics here, especially because the next step is to hide this layer with the mascarpone cream!
When you are happy with your first biscuit layer, scoop half of your mascarpone cream on top, and spread it out evenly.
Repeat the biscuit layer again using the same method as you did with the first layer…
… and then repeat the mascarpone layer again too.
At this point, cover your tiramisu and put it in the fridge until you are ready to serve it. The first time I made the tiramisu, I made the mistake of putting the cocoa powder on at this stage, and by the time I was ready to serve the tiramisu, quite a lot of the cocoa has started to sink into the mascarpone. This made the colour look quite patchy, so I definitely recommend holding off on the cocoa powder for now!
Just before serving, use a mini sieve to sprinkle the cocoa powder on top of the tiramisu, covering it completely. I also sprayed on a bit of edible gold powder (very extra, I know!)
Another idea I thought of (but have not yet tried and tested) is building up the tiramisu into individual little glasses or pots for individual servings. However, if you have left the tiramisu in the fridge for enough time for the mascarpone cream to set properly, it also cuts into slices really easily!
And that is literally the whole recipe! I didn’t think it would be so simple, but you really don’t need any baking expertise at all to follow this recipe, and it tastes so good!
The perfect dessert to make people believe you’re a pro…
Thank you! It definitely was!
This looks absolutely delicious and so worth the effort!!