Catch up time with the Heavenly Cake Bakers

Ok, so I’ve missed a few weeks. Sorry, I’ve been a bad blogger. I’ve missed some baking too. Instead of making a southern (Manhatten) coconut cake, I made a buttermilk country cake with Seville orange curd (from orange juice I had frozen last spring), for my grandfather’s 90th birthday. Instead of a free choice cake from Rose’s heavenly cakes, last weekend, I made this for a friend (who’s in her mid-twenties, but never mind that):

Now granted, this particular cake used the white velvet butter (cup) cakes for the feet, a white velvet bowl cake for the head, and the marble velvet cake for the body, but since I’ve already made those previously, I don’t get to cross something extra off the list.

This week, however, I made Tiramisù, so I do get to cross that off my list. Like most free choice weeks, this was Jay’s choice. 🙂 I don’t like coffee (he does), but I kept an open mind, and actually really enjoyed this one.

Once you have the components ready, tiramisù is probably one of the easiest cakes in the book. First, make your espresso syrup, so it can cool. I used instant, but it didn’t seem to suffer from that, as far as I could tell.

Then measure out your whipping cream, and stash it in the fridge.

Whisk together egg yolks, sugar and Marsala (I had to sub in Madeira, since they didn’t have sweet Marsala at the LCBO).

Cook that combo over a double boiler, whisking constantly, until it reaches 165, and gets nice and thick and fluffy. Stash that in the fridge to cool, and take out your mascarpone at the same time, so it can come to room temperature.

Go outside and weed for a bit.

Come back in, and beat the cooled yolk mixture into the mascarpone, then whip the cream to stiff peaks.

Fold the whipped cream into the cheese/yolk mixture.

Next, start working on your ladyfingers/Savoiardi biscuits. I did a dry fit, so I knew exactly how many I would need and how I should space them. Nothing worse than trying to move floppy soggy cookies around.

Dip the biscuits in the espresso syrup, no more than 1 second per side. Just dip and flip. Spread on half the cheese/yolk/cream mixture, then do another layer of biscuits/another layer of cream/yolk/cheese. Dust on cocoa powder. My cocoa powder layer was a bit on the heavy side, but I blame my sieve for not being fine enough.

Serve and enjoy!

My aunt and uncle happened to stop in on Sunday afternoon to deliver parts for a picnic table and a radial arm saw, so we offered them some Tiramisù. It was a perfect late afternoon pick-me-up, and went surprisingly well with the fresh, local (hard) apple cider that we had bottled on Friday night. Despite my sincere distaste for coffee by itself, I’m starting to actually really enjoy coffee-flavoured desserts. I may be slowly joining the dark side. Our favourite coffee shop will probably be happy to hear that. They’ve offered me samples of a few different blends, roasts and flavours, and none of them has caught my taste buds yet, but they’re still working on it. 😉

On an unrelated note, we just officially paid off the kitchen. Woohoo! Now to start paying for a porch and a shed. Whee!