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

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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!

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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Fraisier Torte

If nothing else (or, if nothing else besides the freshman fifteen), baking has taught me a lot about failure. For every complicated I managed to nail on the first try are at least three flops. And with baking, all of your failures are very physically present, sitting on the counter in front of you, challenging you to take another bite (maybe it'll taste better on the second tasting?), or to toss the whole thing (which always requires explanations to those you live with). 

While my mother is a very accomplished cook, her cooking is sometimes something of a theatrical production, with tantrums in the kitchen and half-cooked food thrown out. I think it was food blogging that taught me to take failure less seriously, to shrug it off and laugh over it with my friends (or, you know, with the Internet). Flops in the kitchen are an inevitable, if unenjoyable, part of baking.

For this cake, it was the simple sponge cake base I just couldn't get right. I skimmed over the long, complicated Fraisier Torte recipe in the Pierre Herme cookbook. Mentally, I dismissed the cake portion as a no-brainer (of course I could whip some eggs and fold in flour! I've done it a hundred times), yet somehow ended up with a hard, dense doorstep of a cake.

Genoise sponge cake is made with a handful of pantry staples, yet it took me three tries to really get the technique down. Much more than a successful baking session, kitchen flops fill you with respect for the magic of baking, of carefully transforming simple ingredients into a fancy finished product when it's so easy to have everything go wrong. 

The finished product was definitely worth all the effort and dirty dishes. The sponge cake sandwiches a thick layer of strawberries and mousseline cream, a pastry cream enriched with buttercream. Pierre Herme's version enriches the pastry cream with a French buttercream but also lightens it with a meringue. I've simplified his recipe significantly (who wants to make meringue twice with two separate methods in one recipe?). It's still on the longer side, but is definitely manageable and also so delicious.

I love that this cake showcases the fresh strawberries, which are just coming into season (and are some of my favorite fruits to photograph!) The tricky sponge cake and filling enhance the fragrance of the strawberries, which really is the central flavor.

So if you've got a few free hours, give this cake a try. And if it doesn't quite work out, give it another! It'll work out in the end, I promise.

Caroline

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Fraisier Torte

Click here for the printable recipe.
Yields: one 9-inch cake
Heavily adapted from the Pierre Herme Pastries cookbook
Special equipment: 9-inch springform pan

Ingredients
For the Genoise Sponge Cake
⅔ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon lemon zest
4 eggs
½ cup sugar

For the Pastry Cream
1 cup whole milk
⅓ cup sugar
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Swiss Meringue Buttercream
2 egg whites
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, cubed, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

For Assembly
1 pound fresh strawberries
2 tablespoons kirsch (optional, rum can be substituted)
powdered sugar, for sprinkling

Directions
Make the sponge cake. Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line the bottom of a 9-inch springform cake pan with a circle of parchment paper. Do not grease the pan; you want the cake to cling to the sides to allow for better rising.

Sift together the flour and salt over a piece of wax paper. Do not skip the sifting--it’s important to ensuring your cake does not have any lumps.

In a medium mixing bowl, mix together the butter and vanilla extract. Let the butter cool to room temperature. In a small bowl, combine the lemon juice and zest. 

Combine the eggs and sugar in a large heatproof mixing bowl. Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water (make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water). Gently heat the eggs and sugar, stirring constantly, until the mixture becomes foamy and is very warm, slightly above body temperature.

Whisk the eggs with a hand mixer or stand mixer on high speed for about 10 minutes, or until the mixture has tripled in volume and is very pale. (If you’re using a stand mixer, it may take slightly less time). When you lift up the whisk, you should be able to draw a clear figure 8 with the mixture.

Remove about ½ cup of the egg mixture and fold it into the butter. With the mixer on medium speed, whisk in the lemon juice and zest, and then gradually whisk in the flour, followed by the egg/butter mixture. Work quickly here, before the eggs deflate too much.

Pour the cake batter into the cake pan and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the center of the cake springs back when touched. Cool the cake upside down on a cooling rack for several hours.

Prepare the mousseline cream filling. First, make the pastry cream. Pour the milk in a saucepan and heat until it begins to simmer. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, and cornstarch in a heatproof mixing bowl.

Temper the eggs: gradually pour the hot milk into the egg mixture while whisking the eggs constantly.  Pour the mixture back into the saucepan, and cook until it begins to boil. Take off the stove and stir in the butter, followed by the vanilla extract. Pour into a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap, pressed directly onto the surface of the pastry cream. Refrigerate for at least 3 to 4 hours.
About 30 minutes before making the swiss meringue buttercream, take the pastry cream out of the refrigerator and let sit at room temperature.

Make the swiss meringue buttercream. Mix together the egg whites, sugar, and salt in a clean, heatproof mixing bowl. Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water (again, don’t let the bottom of the bowl touch the water)  and gently heat the egg mixture, whisking constantly, until it reaches 160 F. 

Take the bowl off the heat, and beat with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes, medium-high for 2 minutes, and high for 5-7 minutes, until the eggs form a stiff, glossy meringue. Turn the mixer to medium speed, and gradually add in the butter a few cubes at a time. Beat the frosting at high speed for another 2 -3 minutes. The mixture may look curdled at first after you add the butter, but it will smooth out. Beat in the vanilla extract.

Make the mousseline cream: With the mixer on medium speed, gradually add the pastry cream you made earlier to the swiss meringue buttercream.

Assemble the cake. Cut the sponge cake in half, into two even layers. Peel off the parchment paper circle. Brush the tops of both layers with the kirsch. (If you do not drink, you can omit the kirsch.)

Set aside about 10 small strawberries (about 1 inch in length) for the sides of the cake. Cut these strawberries in half. Roughly dice the remaining strawberries.

Place one of the sponge cake layers in the bottom of the springform pan. Line the strawberry halves along the side of the pan, cut side facing outward. Spread about half of the mousseline cream over the cake, being careful not to dislodge the strawberries. Scatter the diced strawberries over the cream, and spread the remaining cream over them. Top with the other cake layer.

Refrigerate the cake overnight. Remove the cake from the springform pan, and dust with powdered sugar.

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