September 12: Tiramisu with Homemade Genoise Ladyfingers

Today is Keith's birthday, and his special request was tiramisu.  So, since tiramisu is not a cake, I decided to make the genoise ladyfingers as my Saturday Cake.

I chose to use the Genoise Ladyfingers recipe from Baking with Julia by Julia Child, based on the TV series of the same name. Genoise is the French name for "from Genoa" Italy and refers to a slightly dry, sturdy cake with no leavening other than eggs.  Genoise is traditionally used for jelly rolls, Bouche de Noel, trifle and ladyfingers because it is durable, flexible and soaks up flavors.   The eggs are beaten at room temperature.  The batter is exceedingly fluffy with a texture like whipped cream and is piped onto baking parchment.  My batter seemed to lose some fluffiness between going into the top of the pastry bag, and coming out of the end.  I marked the parchment with guide-lines to help the ladyfingers be consistently sized, but mine look more like arthritic-lady-fingers and the batter spread out as soon as I squeezed it from the bag.  I think may have been to vigorous when folding the melted butter into the batter (last step).  I baked the ladyfingers for about 5 minutes at 400º just until spongy and firm.  A few developed a golden color on an edge, but ideally they wouldn't have any golden color.  I cooled them on their parchment and went on to the tiramisu preparations.

I used the tiramisu recipe from Carmine's Family-Style Cookbook.  Carmine's restaurant is one of my favorite places to eat in New York.  They have one location at Times Square in the theatre district and another on the upper west side.  I was introduced to Carmine's by female Secret Service Special Agent from the New York field office.  We had gone through USSS training together and loved to talk about food and cooking.  Carmine's serves all of their food family-style and the tiramisu comes to the table in a BIG bowl.  It is the best tiramisu I have ever had.  Plus, they make a fantastic Speidini alla Romano appetizer (thick bread toasted with fresh mozzarella, then covered in a tangy butter sauce with capers and anchovies).  Their Chicken Marsala and Fra Diavolo are delicious.  Since we usually traveled to NYC a couple of times a year, it was easy to lure other Special Agents in to the "cult" of Carmine's.  My carmine's cookbook was a gift from the SA whom I had introduced to the Spiedidi and tiramisu.

First thing this morning, before a cup of coffee even, I made the zabaglione.  Zabaglione, or sabayon, is a custard of egg yolks, sugar and sweet wine like Marsala.  It needs to be prepared and allowed to chill for a while before assembling the tiramisu.  The zabaglione is folded into a mixture of whipped cream and mascarpone cheese.

In a baking dish, I layered ladyfingers (soaked in a mixture of cold espresso and Kahlua) with the mascarpone/zabaglione mixture then I added bittersweet chocolate shavings to the top of each layer.  I let the whole thing rest in the refrigerator for several hours and after a delicious dinner of barbecue at Smoke Belly in Buckhead, we returned home for Keith to try his tiramisu.  He loved it!  I was lucky that no one could see the malformed ladyfingers buried under all of the lovely cream!

Next Saturday: Mallorie Hinze's Prune Cake