Individual Tiramisu

I apologize for the lack of food/craft posts. I’ve been refocusing my priorities as well as refocusing and reorganizing this blog. But I have been busy in the kitchen! This post was a long time coming, seeing that I made this in November…

I helped coordinate, cook and serve a dinner for 22 priests last November. I had a few responsibilities in the kitchen, namely salad and dessert. The dinner was Italian and the dessert that came to mind was tiramisu. But I like to overcomplicate things for the sake of convenience. Is that an oxymoron or what?! So I came up with a trio of mini desserts — tiramisu, lemon meringue tarts, and florentine cookies.

Why mini tiramisu? It’s portion-controlled an looks pretty on a plate.

The big question: How am I going to pull this off?

Sure, I could make a whole tray of tiramisu and cut it in small squares. But that would look like I’m being skimpy with the serving size. It needed to look more deliberate.

I scoured the web and found a few ways of making stacked rounds of tiramisu by using short tubes of PVC piping. I didn’t want to go out and buy some pipes so I looked to my cake/cookie decorating drawer (yes, I have one of those) and found a few sheets of acetate that I’ve used to make royal icing transfers.

I cut the acetate down to the size by measuring the diameter around a round cookie cutter which I would use later to cut the sponge cake. Using the cookie cutter as a guide and support, I wrapped the acetate around the cutter, taped the tubes together and placed them on a small cookie sheet.

I baked a sponge cake on a cookie sheet/jelly roll pan and cut the rounds with the cookie cutter. Then I made the cream filling and placed it in a large piping bag affixed with a large round piping tip.

One side of each sponge round was brushed with strong coffee mixed with marsala wine and sugar.

Then the layering begins…
The sponge cake is placed with coffee-soaked side down then the tops brushed with coffee.

The cream filling gets piped in.

 

Repeat two more times.

I dusted it with cocoa powder and let it set in the fridge for 12 hours.

To serve, the acetate was removed by cutting the tape. 

I apologize for the phone pics. I didn’t think to bring a camera with me at the dinner. Well, I was busy serving food! 

I think there were a lot of happy priests after dessert. Some even asked for seconds! Luckily, I had a few extra. 

You can find acetate sheets at a cake decorating store. I believe I paid 80 cents for a 16″x24″ sheet at my local cake decorating store. The recipes I used are below:

Sponge Cake:
http://www.joyofbaking.com/SpongeCakeorBiscuit.html

Tiramisu (filling and coffee) I substituted marsala wine in place of rum:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/tiramisu-recipe.html 

See? Even a home cook can be fancy sometimes.