Tiramisu Charlotte Recipe + Skillshare

For the past month, Monica and I have lived, breathed, and dreamed tiramisu. As I've hinted on Instagram, we experimented with so many iterations of this humble Italian dessert that we've bought almost our weight in mascarpone cheese, and are still slightly buzzed from the coffee. 

Monica and I have partnered with Skillshare, an online learning community, to create a series of baking videos on making tiramisu. Professionals and dedicated amateurs can share their skills--from cooking to photography to marketing--through digital classes. Our class, "How to Make Tiramisu Without Being Cliche," walks you through creating a traditional tiramisu from scratch, as well as two more creative variations.

We were mildly flabbergasted that a videographer for Skillshare (thanks, Arron!) was actually going to travel to Indiana to film us. Learning to explain our baking process to the camera was quite a learning curve (we spent a good 15 minutes laughing at our first edits!), but I'm so excited about the recipes we developed. In addition to a very traditional tiramisu, we created a tiramisu-flavored charlotte (a British cream and sponge cake dessert), and a tiramisu French opera cake. 

We're sharing that tiramisu charlotte recipe here today, but if you would like to watch us walk you through this and two other recipes through step-by-step videos, do sign up for our Skillshare class. The referral link, which gives you a free trial, is here.

Stay warm,  my fellow East Coast-ers!
-Caroline

---

TIRAMISU CHARLOTTE

Yields: one 6-inch charlotte
Click here for the printer-friendly recipe.

Ingredients
For the Ladyfingers
½ cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
3 eggs, separated
½ cup granulated sugar, divided
¼ cup powdered sugar

For the Mascarpone Cream Filling
2 tsp powdered gelatin
3 tbsp water
1 ½ cup heavy cream
½ cup powdered sugar
8 oz. mascarpone cheese
2 tbsp Marsala
1 tbsp espresso

For Assembly
½ cup toasted chopped hazelnuts
¼ cup espresso, cooled
1 tbsp Marsala

For the Chocolate Curls
2 oz. dark chocolate
½ teaspoon vegetable oil

Directions
Make the savoiardi. Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper. Find a 6-inch cake pan or pot to use as your Charlotte mold. Use the pan to draw a 6-inch circle on the parchment paper. Turn the paper upside down on the cookie sheet so that you don’t get ink on your savoiardi. 

Sift the flour, cornstarch, and salt over a piece of wax paper. 

Whisk together the egg yolks with ¼ cup of granulated sugar until the yolks become a very pale yellow and double in volume. Fold in the dry ingredients.

Add the egg whites and remaining ¼ cup of sugar to a mixing bowl and whisk until stiff peaks form. For best results, start whisking with the electric mixer set on low speed, and gradually increase speed.

Fold about ⅓ of the egg whites into the egg yolk/flour mixture to lighten. Fold in the remaining egg whites, until just combined. 

Spoon the batter into a piping bag. Fill in the circle you drew on the parchment paper, leaving a one-inch border from the edge. (You will get a cookie round that is slightly smaller than the base of your pan). Use the rest of the batter to pipe 4-inch long ladyfingers on the other cookie sheet.

Bake the ladyfingers for 25-30 minutes, rotating the cookie sheets halfway through, until golden brown and crispy. Bake the cookie round for another 10 minutes. Let cool completely.

Make the mascarpone cream filling. In a small bowl, combine the gelatin and water. Microwave for 15-20 seconds, until the gelatin is liquid and melted. Let cool to room temperature.

Whisk the whipped cream to soft peaks. Whisk in the powdered sugar. While whisking continuously, slowly pour in the liquid gelatin.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the mascarpone cheese, Marsala, and espresso. Fold the the whipped cream into the mascarpone mixture.

Line charlotte mold you are using with foil or plastic wrap. Trim one end of the ladyfingers, so that the bottom is even and they are all about the same height.

Place the cookie round in the bottom of the pan. Stand up the ladyfingers around the perimeter of the pan. You may need to spread a little of the cream filling on the base first, so that the cookies have something to stick to.

Mix together the espresso and Marsala. Spread about ⅓ of the mascarpone cream mixture on top of the cookie round. Dip a few of the remaining ladyfingers in the espresso mixture, and place on top of the cream. Be careful not to let them touch with the ladyfingers along the edge of the pan, or else the walls of your charlotte will go soggy. Sprinkle with about half of the hazelnuts.

Repeat this process again with the remaining mascarpone cream, ladyfingers, and hazelnuts, finishing with a final layer of cream on top.

Refrigerate overnight to let the filling set.

Make the chocolate curls. Melt the chocolate in the microwave on medium power in 20 second bursts. Mix in the vegetable oil.

Turn a clean baking  pan upside down, and spread the chocolate in a thin layer of the bottom of the pan. Refrigerate for about five minutes, until the chocolate is set but not too hard.

Using a metal spatula, press the edge against the chocolate and scrape away from you until chocolate makes curls.

Using the edges of the foil or plastic wrap, gently lift the Charlotte out of the pan. Peel away the foil. Top with chocolate curls and serve!

Check out our Skillshare class to watch us make this tiramisu opera cake!

---

Irish Barmbrack (Tea Cake)

A British one, is characterized
As British. But don't be surprised
If I demur, for, be advised
     My passport's green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
     To toast The Queen.

—Seamus Heaney, "An Open Letter"

I get asked a lot about why I am so fascinated with Ireland (and, standing here in the middle of senior fall with another 40 or 50 pages of thesis writing  about Irish poetry ahead, I still am). The answer I give usually is a vagary about the British Empire, and Ireland as an interesting postcolonial study.

And I have spent quite a bit of the past two years thinking about Ireland as a colonial subject and imperial actor, from spies during the Irish Civil War to policies on prostitution after independence. It sometimes has been a rather simplistic study, a delineation of some nationalist ideal of what is "Irish" and what is "British" and other, a consideration of a country supposedly still reeling from a "long colonial concussion," to borrow Seamus Deane's phrase.

But I also love this island that I've never visited because of a certain empathy it has with my own background as a second generation immigrant. I think there is a sense of in-between-ness, uncertainty, and sometimes crisis in Irish culture and history that strikes a familiar chord. (This is merely my two cents; I do not, of course, speak for the Irish people. "I'll stick to I," as Seamus Heaney says in his poem).  There is the question of losing a national language, of struggling for intellectual autonomy from a presence that has for so long been intertwined with one's own identity.

These themes certainly aren't unique to Ireland, and I'm not sure why I'm not studying someone who looks more like I do. But Ireland has been a literary and intellectual focal point for me, and will continue to be so, at least until I get that thesis in.

I'm going to hold off on all the jokes about Irish food I could be making right now, and just tell you about this tea bread. It's a spiced cake usually made in autumn, and is flavorful, moist, and dense. Traditionally, you add a ring to the batter, and the person whose slice of cake contains the ring will be the first person to get married. (I held off on the ring though, since I didn't want my friend to break a tooth when I shipped the cake to her). 

Unlike most tea breads, this one actually contains a hefty amount of black tea in the batter itself, rather than being simply cake served with tea. Use Irish breakfast tea, if you can get your hands on it; it's rather stronger than traditional black tea. 

I used English tea, and felt rather treasonous about it...

Love,
Caroline

---

Irish Barmbrack

An Irish tea cake featuring the flavors of autumn

Click here for the printable recipe.
Loosely adapted from Saveur
Yields: one 9x5 loaf (about 8 servings)

Ingredients
1 cup raisins or dried currants
½ cup dried cherries or cranberries
1 ½ cups strong black tea, cooled
4 tablespoons candied citrus peel (you can substitute 1 tablespoon freshly grated orange zest)
¼ cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
⅓ cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
¼ cup honey
1 tablespoon hot water

Directions
Combine the dried fruit, black tea, and citrus peel in a large bowl. Let sit for about two hours, so that the fruit re-hydrates and absorbs the tea.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease a 9x5x3 inch loaf tin with vegetable oil. (Or line the tin with parchment paper). 

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, egg, egg yolk, and vegetable oil. Mix in the dried fruit and peel along with the tea they have been soaking in. Mix in the spices, followed by the flour and baking powder.

Pour the batter into the loaf tin, and bake for about 40 to 50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. 

Mix together the honey and hot water, and pour it over the top of the cake while it is still warm. Let cool for at least 15 minutes. Cut some generous slices and serve

---

On Tiramisu, and Our Neurotic Food Culture

This is something of an existential piece. 

You might have noticed that it's been a while since I've posted regularly. There's the usual excuses (i.e. school, thesis research, my cookie sheet couldn't fit into the tiny summer dorm oven), but to be honest, I've had some doubts about continuing to food blog. I still love the baking, the photography, the wonderful bloggers I've met, and the excitement of sharing and finding new recipes. But then there's the massive social media pushes, the fact that these posts aren't really about the experience of creating food, the pressure to cook on trend, to create new or innovative or seasonal recipes, the strings of SEO-friendly buzzwords. And it makes me wonder what this blog is really contributing to.

A friend was talking about how much Food Network she watched: "If you gave me a set of ingredients, I could tell you exactly what a professional chef would do with them, even though I couldn't do any of it myself." We (and, I think, us millennials especially) spend so much time thinking and posting about food, yet so little actually preparing it and working with it ourselves.

Somewhere along the way, we seemed to have forgotten the that food is humble, cooking is approachable and, actually, terribly ordinary. To borrow a phrase from Michael Pollan, we seemed to have developed a sort of national eating disorder. We pick up our phones before our forks at restaurants, we spend hours in the living room worshiping celebrity chefs yet hardly set foot in the kitchen, we neurotically dash around an unfamiliar city looking for That One restaurant on Yelp with the five stars.

And I think we food bloggers have contributed to that look-don't touch mentality towards cooking as we work to make our food look immaculately delicious. We try so hard to create styled, edited, and Pinterest-ready photos, flooding social media feeds with beautiful posts that, intentionally or unintentionally, seem just  a little unachievably perfect (Well, some of us are much farther from "unachievably perfect" than others...)

Of course, I'm not accusing food bloggers of, well, actively promoting unrealistic standards of food beauty (though if you think about it, we are rather like the fashion magazines of food, staying a season ahead, publicizing the trends, carefully editing our shiny photos). But what we do is symptomatic of this generation's rather unhealthy relationship with food. Paradoxically, cooking and food are both over-hyped yet under-appreciated. They have somehow become a part of our social media identities, yet all this food culture has somehow made us forget the humble labor of providing nourishment itself. 

This isn't a sermon or a call to action, merely me just wondering out loud. I do plan on sticking around on this here blog (plus I just renewed my Squarespace payments, so...), but as I plan the next few posts, I am trying to focus on sharing what I genuinely feel like eating. It's a consideration that sometimes gets lost in the need to always be making something new, something with pumpkin spice (ick, fall is coming, you guys...), something to fill a gap in the recipe index, something that would look good on Instagram. I forget sometimes to enjoy my food.

To that end, I think tiramisu is a pretty good place to get started, not least because it translates to "pick me up" from Italian.  It's gone out of fashion a little bit since it was first introduced in the 60s, losing its novelty and becoming rather overdone. There's millions of recipes for tiramisu on the Internet, and mine isn't unique at all, but I wanted to share because I love it. Tiramisu is delicious and satisfying yet humble, in terms of presentation and assembly.

My first food blog post ever was about a tiramisu-flavored cheesecake. I didn't post the recipe (which included Cool Whip...) on my high school newspaper food blog, but a friend  on staff liked my terrible picture enough to ask for the recipe. She went on to make the tiramisu cheesecake, sending us photos, and posting her own takes on tiramisu.

That embarrassingly blurry and over-corrected photo is a reminder of what I love most about food blogging, of the ability to inspire others to get into the kitchen and start experimenting. We all love seeing the magazine-ready photos, speaking like food critics about mouthfeel and richness and paired flavorings, watching videos of professional chefs deftly handling delicate patisserie. But in the end, they all tell a simple story about people, a story about feeding others and creating enjoyment and nourishment through food.

So go pull out these ingredients from your pantry, and treat yourself to some tiramisu. I really do mean it.

Caroline

---

Classic Tiramisu

Click here for the printer-friendly recipe
Yields: 5-6 servings
Ladyfinger recipe adapted from Martha Stewart, tiramisu recipe adapted from The New York Times

Ingredients
For the Tiramisu24 savoiardi, or Italian ladyfingers (recipe below)
3 eggs, separated
¼ cup granulated sugar, divided
2 tablespoons Marsala
8 ounces mascarpone cheese (see notes)
1 cup espresso, cooled
1 tablespoon cocoa powder, for dusting

For the Savoiardi
½ cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
3 eggs, separated
½ cup granulated sugar, divided
¼ cup powdered suga

DirectionsMake the savoiardi. Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper. Sift the flour, cornstarch, and salt over a piece of wax paper. 

Whisk together the egg yolks with ¼ cup of granulated sugar until the yolks become a very pale yellow and double in volume. Fold in the dry ingredients.

Add the egg whites and remaining ¼ cup of sugar to a mixing bowl and whisk until stiff peaks form. For best results, start whisking with the electric mixer set on low speed, and gradually increase speed.

Fold about ⅓ of the egg whites into the egg yolk/flour mixture to lighten. Fold in the remaining egg whites, until just combined. 
Spoon the batter into a piping back. Pipe fingers about ½ inch thick and 4 inches long. Sift powdered sugar over the cookies, and let sit for 1-2 minutes until the sugar dissolves, then sift again and let the sugar dissolve again. 

Bake the cookies for 25-30 minutes, rotating the cookie sheets halfway through, until golden brown and crispy. Let cool completely.

Make the tiramisu filling. Whisk the egg yolks with 2 tablespoons sugar until they have tripled in volume and become a very pale yellow. Add the Marsala; whisk for 3-5 minutes until pale/thick. Add mascarpone. 
In a clean bowl, mix together the egg whites and remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar. Whisk until stiff peaks form.

Fold about ⅓ of the egg whites into the egg yolk/mascarpone mixture to lighten. Fold in the remaining egg whites, until just combined. 

Assemble the tiramisu. Pour the espresso in a shallow bowl. Quickly dip the ladyfingers in the espresso and line them along the bottom of a 9x5 inch loaf pan, or individual containers.

Spread about half of the mascarpone filling over the ladyfingers, and top with another layer of espresso-dipped ladyfingers. Spread the remaining filling on top. Refrigerate the tiramisu for at least an hour, or overnight. 

Dust with cocoa powder and serve.

Notes
This recipe does contain raw eggs. Consuming undercooked eggs carries the risk of food-born illness. While the risks of consuming raw eggs are usually minimal, do be careful in your preparation and to whom you are serving. 

Mascarpone is generally found with the specialty cheeses at the grocery store, rather than with the milk and cream cheese. 

---

Lemon Ricotta Pound Cake

I used to read these murder mysteries by Meg Cabot about the trials and travails of one Heather Wells, a college dorm administrator turned unofficial private detective who solves the murders of several of her snotty undergrads. According to the author, the series' fictional college was partly inspired by her own experience working at an NYU dorm for several years. One gets the impression it was hardly a dream job.

All of which is to say that it seems rather strange that my own house administrator at school (incidentally also named Heather) appears to quite like the hectic job of dealing with some four hundred undergrads. Not only does she seem quite happy that none of us have been pushed down elevator shafts or found beheaded in the kitchen, but she is somehow always incredibly warm and enthusiastic, despite the crazy hours she works. I've bumped into her on a Saturday afternoon pulling tray after tray of cupcakes out of the oven for an open house (in the sketchy dorm kitchen I always complain about, no less!)

We occasionally get emails from Heather with the subject line "You Snooze You Lose" and a picture of the homemade baked goods sitting in her office that are up for grabs. She had out lemon ricotta cookies one day, tangy and dense and good enough to almost make you think that spring was finally going come to Boston. 

She condescended to share some of her favorite ricotta recipes with me, and food blogger that I am, I did some experimentation with them. This pound cake recipe is from Giada De Laurentiis (I'm kind of sentimental about Giada--the pie plate I used for my first pie was from her) and is a twist on the classic pound cake, adding ricotta and citrus. I swapped the butter for vegetable oil, to make the cake slightly lighter and to let the flavor of ricotta shine through, and reduced the amount of baking powder by a lot. The original amount called for was way too much, and a lot of the recipe reviews complained that the cake either spilled over or sunk when it was taken out of the oven. (Oh, and I made it a one-bowl recipe, because that's how many mixing bowls I own in college).

It's always exciting to get recipe recommendations from people and see how they turn out; this cake is flavorful and dense, sweet and slightly tart. In addition to feeding hungry college students, it's perfect for breakfast, an afternoon snack, or a casual dessert. It's a classic cake and a great lemon loaf recipe, a necessary addition in any baker's repertoire. (Thanks, Starbucks).

Enjoy!
Caroline

---

Lemon Ricotta Pound Cake

Click here for the printer-friendly recipe
Yields: one 9-inch loaf cake, about 8 servings
Loosely Adapted from Giada De Laurentiis

Ingredients
For the Cake
3 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
1 ½ cups whole milk ricotta
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon lemon zest
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
1 ½ cups cake flour

For the Lemon Glaze
½  cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest, plus more for sprinkling

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan with vegetable oil. 

Beat together the eggs, sugar, vegetable oil, and ricotta until smooth. Beat in the vanilla extract, lemon zest, and salt.

Fold in the baking powder and cake flour. Pour the batter into the loaf tin and bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. 
Let cool for 15 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a cooling rack and let cool completely.

Make the glaze. Mix together the powdered sugar, lemon juice, and zest. The glaze should be thick and fall into the bowl in ribbons. If too thin, add more powdered sugar; if too thick, add more lemon juice. 

Pour the glaze over the cooled pound cake. Sprinkle additional lemon zest if desired.

---