Melt in your mouth, perfectly flavored and miraculously rich tiramisu cake with ladyfingers. This is a tiramisu recipe without alcohol and guess what? no raw egg involved!
So what is tiramisu cake? In case you do not know, tiramisu is an Italian trifle that is creamy and ethereal. It is made by dipping Italian savoiardi cookies (Ladyfingers) in espresso and layering them with a magical, creamy filling. Finally it is dusted with cocoa powder and chilled for few hours in the fridge. You’ll end up with a cake-y textured cookies flavored with espresso and topped with a lightened up, fluffy and cloudy custard like top. So delicious.
The bad news is, I’ve never really tasted the classic Tiramisu as the cloudy dreamy cream usually contains some sort of alcohol, usually rum and traditionally Marsala … how unfortunate is that!
A couple of months ago, or may be more, I’ve had my first experience with carbonara sauce. It was not a good one though, and I am sure this was not because of the recipe but rather the recipient of the recipe :). Knowing that it had raw eggs, that is supposed to be cooked with the heat from the pasta, made it hard for the pasts to go all the way through to my stomach 🤣.
I am not totally against consuming raw eggs, it has some rules you need to follow, but somehow this puts a pressure on me. Although, I do not have this issue when licking a cake batter or cookie dough!
I’ve had Tiramisu, the easy way, many times as I’ve this amazing friend who makes an amazing “fake tiramisu” as we call it. She usually makes it with plain cookies like Marie, and she uses condensed milk, cream and cool whip for the cream. It was delicious, but I really wanted to taste the classic one so I googled a recipe with no alcohol and I came across really very good recipes but all of them used the raw egg method.
Getting rid of the alcohol was not hard at all, actually the espresso and the cocoa along with some pinches of vanilla powder was more than enough.
For the raw eggs, we’ll cook the egg yolks over a water bath, this was enough to keep my mind at ease and kept the hunting carbonara memory away 😟. So without further ado let’s see what is happening here:
Over a double broiler or a water bath mix egg yolks and sugar. keep stirring and cooking over low flame until it turns pale yellow as shown above. Remove from heat and stir for a couple of more minutes to make sure that the mixture is no more grainy, set aside.
Then we will beat the Mascarpone cheese to loosen it a bit then add the whipping cream. Beat until hard peak forms.
Now fold in the cooked egg yolks gently until everything is well combined.
Quickly dip ladyfingers in the coffee and let excess coffee drip. Place cookies side by side and continue until one layer is formed. As you can see I was unable to get a hold of hard large Savoiardi cookies, all what was there in the stores was those packages of mini soft ladyfingers. I’ve hardened mine before using as explained in the notes below.
After finishing the first layer add cream, level and layer another dipped cookies on top. Continue layering cream and cookies until you end up with a nice smooth layer of cream. My 13×9 pan was filled to the top just after two layers of cookies and two layers of cream.
If you wanna get that fancy domes look, just pipe some cream through a piping bag, no tips is necessary as you can see in the video.
Now brew yourself a nice cup of coffee, set back beside your fireplace and …. enjoy a piece… or may be two :).
I hope you’ll like this recipe and please if you make this recipe, snap a pic and hashtag it #amiraspantry — I love to see your creations on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter!
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- 8 large egg yolks.
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract optional.
- 1 1/3 cup sugar.
- 1 1/2 cup mascarpone cheese room temperature.
- 2 cups heavy whipping cream.
- 3- 7 oz packages Italian Ladyfingers cookies Savoiardi.*
- 1 1/2 cup espresso/coffee freshly brewed .**
- Cocoa for dusting.
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Start by making the espresso and leaving it to cool to room temperature.
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In a deep bowl, mix egg yolks and sugar and vanilla if using, on top of a water bath. Stir and keep cooking for 10 minutes.
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Remove mixture from heat and stir for another 2-3 minutes until mixture is not grainy and have a pale yellow color.
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In a separate bowl, beat the mascarpone cheese for a minute then pour in the whipping cream and beat until hard peak forms.
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Gently fold in the egg yolk mixture until everything is well combined.
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Dip the cookies one at a time in the espresso to get them wet and arrange in a 13x9 dish to form one layer.
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Spoon almost one third of the cream mixture and level the surface.
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Repeat dipping and arranging the rest of the cookies to form the second cookies layer.
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Spoon another half of the cream mixture and level.
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Fill a piping bag with the rest of the cream, cut the tip and pipe domes on top of the cream to get that fancy look.***
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Cover and refrigerate 4 hours and preferably overnight.
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Dust with cocoa powder just before serving.
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Enjoy!
* I’ve only found soft mini ladyfingers in grocery stores neat me and I’ve used 3 packages. If this is your case as well then you’ll need to Harden those before cooking by either arranging them on a baking sheet, cover with kitchen towel and let it air dry overnight OR heat your oven to 250F, then turn off heat and place the baking sheet and leave it there until they harden, took mine about 20 minutes.
** I’ve also used instant coffee and mixed 3 Tablespoons with hot water and a teaspoon of sugar then let it cool down.
*** If you do not want to make that fancy look, then make sure to add half the filling inside and half on top of the last layer, level then dust with cocoa after refrigerating.
Recipe adapted from Ask chef Dennise
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May I suggest:
I am trying your recipe tonight. I am making the lady fingers from scratch, my local stores don’t sell them. When I get it finished I’ll post a picture of how it turns out…. I am hoping it’s going to be awesome. Wish me luck….
Rachel, thank you for trying the recipe out. WOW, hats off, a homemade lady fingers!!! I bet this will turn out super delicious and fresh, nothing beats homemade freshness. I am sure it will turn out beautiful and tasty.
Your version looks delicious and I love the way you make the pretty peaks on the top.
Karen, they look cool right? Happy new year dear.
This is one of my oldest son’s favorite desserts! Yours looks spectacular—I need to make this for him (and save a couple slices for myself!!!).
I haven’t seen tiramisu before at your blog Liz, I hope to see your version soon. Thanks for stopping by and Happy new year.