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.

acetate_tubes

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.

rounds_coffee

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

sponge_coffee

The cream filling gets piped in.

cream_filling

 

Repeat two more times.

layers

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

cocoa_dusted

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

trio_tiramisu_florentine_lemontart

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. 

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