Tiramisu

Tiramisu is good stuff. I won't say its impossible to screw up --- I've had dry ones in restaurants; not sure why, though if I had to guess, I'd say they didn't chill long enough for the filling to incorporate the liquid from the coffee and cheese, not to mention, the booze --- but its difficult.

I will be making it again this weekend. To my surprise, my Italian mother in law likes the idea of us bringing some along. Granted, she wasn't too thrilled with the 'Italian Cheesecake' I made, but what the heck. If she doesn't like it, I know a young girl who will. Who has, in fact, already warned that it might not make it all the way to her grandmother's house.

When we made it, one mistake I made (well, its in the recipe, but I disagree with the recipe) was in the use of coffee with the ladyfingers as an alternative to using espresso. The recipe I used said to 'dip them in the espresso'. I used coffee. Perhaps espresso has a significantly more powerful caffeine kick, but I didn't notice all that much coffee taste. It tasted good, don't get me wrong, but there wasn't a bite to it. So, when I transcribed the recipe, I changed it to say 'soak the ladyfingers briefly' rather than simply dipping them. Before I did that, I searched to see how common this technique was, and came across several that mentioned that tiramisu is also made with sponge cake. Hmmm, I thought, that might be a simple, quick method -- buy a premade sponge cake, slice it in half, mix and apply the paste, hey presto. What could be easier?

Apparently, using Twinkies.