Coffee is our ingredient of the season, and we’re slowly building up an awesome  archive of coffee posts!

This is the last coffee post to close-out our Ingredient of the Season, so there was no other choice than to end it with dessert. And tiramisu at that… here’s the part where I admit that we’re ending with tiramisu because I was too intimidated to make it earlier in the season.

Don’t be me; tiramisu is not a difficult dessert to make. Just follow our instructions below, and then refrain from eating it all by yourself. Because that’s the hard part.

Tiramisu

Tiramisu is a coffee-flavored Italian dessert that’s a little bit cake-like and a little bit creamy custard, but note that you don’t even bake the “cake” part, and you barely do anything to form the custard layers…. of course, not everyone *has* to learn how to make tiramisu.

From my basic web-browsing, this is a dessert that comes with a lot of opinionated makers and eaters. But not us, we aren’t from the motherland, we aren’t sticklers about our lady fingers (lady parts, now that’s another story), we’re ok with trying different alcohols with the coffee. All we know is a good thing when we taste it, and this is good!

The recipe below is a variation on this one. As you’ll see, that recipe has five star reviews. After reading the comments below that recipe, we made a few changes and were really happy with the results.

*And note that the final 4-6 hours of rest time means that you should make this at least that far in advance of when you want to eat it. I made mine the night before and it was perfect.

Ingredients

• 6 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 16 oz mascarpone cheese
• 1/2 cup strong coffee
• 1 Tbsp rum
• 3 Tbsp coffee liqueur (Kahlua or DIY).
• 5 oz lady finger cookies
• 1 Tbsp cocoa powder

How-to

• In a saucepan, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Add in the sugar and continue to stir the mixture over medium heat until it comes to a low boil. Boil gently for 1 minute, stirring/lightly whisking the entire time. Take the mixture off the heat and let it cool slightly. Then pour the mixture into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap or bees wrap (pressing it down onto the top of the mixture to prevent a skin from forming), and place it in the fridge to cool for an hour.
• Once the egg mixture has cooled, continue on with the recipe.
• Whisk the heavy cream and vanilla until stiff peaks form (you’re just making a simple whipped cream).
• In a bowl, mix together the coffee, rum, and coffee liqueur.
• Split the lady fingers in half lengthwise.
• Place one layer of split lady fingers on the bottom of a 9×9 inch baking dish. Brush the lady fingers with the coffee mixture – you want it to soak in without any excess pooling in the bottom of the dish. Gently cover the lady fingers with about half of the egg mixture (I used slightly less than half and had some leftover). Then cover the egg mixture with half of the whipped cream. Repeat the layers one more time: lady fingers, coffee, egg mixture, and whip. Finish with a dusting of cocoa powder across the top of the whipped cream.
• Place the finished tiramisu in the fridge to rest for at least 4-6 hours or even overnight before serving.