Recipe: Tiramisu in Japan – an experiment

tiramisuYesterday we had visitors, so I decided to try out Tiramisu. Now, normally Tiramisu is made with Mascarpone, a rare beast in Japan, especially in Ishikawa (hint: if someone knows a place where to find Mascarpone, please let me know). So I decided to create my own Mascarpone-like cream for the Tiramisu.

Ingredients for a big bowl of Tiramisu

For the Mascarpone-like cream

  • 200g cream cheese
  • 100ml (or more) of cream (real one, not the fake one!)
  • two spoons of yogurt
  • skin of a lemon (the one where you can eat the skin, untreated one)

Plus

  • 3 eggs
  • 100g (or more) sugar
  • ladyfinger like cookies: whatever you might find
  • espresso (optinally with a bit of rum or similar alcohol)

Procedure

Mix the incredients of the Mascarpone-like cream until smooth. Split the eggs into whites and yolks (yellow), add half of the sugar to each of it and beat it (separately) until the yolks become creamy and the whites strong enough not to drop out of the bowl. Add a bit of espresso (cold) to the yolks. Mix the yolks and the Mascarpone-like cream until smooth, then add the beaten whites and again smooth it. Tip the cookies into espresso and layer them together with the cream in a bowl. Put into the fridge for a few hours. Before serving, add cocoa powder on the top.

The recipe is not perfect by now, the cream was too soft for my taste. I will keep experimenting. Of course the taste is not really like tiramisu with mascarpone – but we have to live with what we can do.

4 Responses

  1. Mattia says:

    Actually mascarpone is quite easy to find in Tokyo. Much more difficult and expensive is ricotta.
    Anyway, rakuten seems to have some.

    Also make sure that you place savoiardi (ladyfinger) with the side that you tipped with coffee up. So that gravity does the rest.

    Ciao

  2. Hi Mattia,

    yeah, Tokyo Tokyo Tokyo – far from Kanazawa 😉 Here on the countryside it is not so easy.

    Rakuten is a good idea, but doesn’t help if one (like me, always) decides in the night before or the morning what to cook.

    I also didn’t get any “Biskotten” (savoiardi) here, but used a bit different cookies. I guess I have to redo it a few more times.

  3. Oolong says:

    I made my first-ever Tiramisu last week, and it was more than averaged, said my friends. The mascarpone cheese I can find in any supper market in Nagoya, which is the one to serve with bread, so I always found it near the cheese-butter corner for breads. The most difficult ingredient to find is the ladyfinger biscuit, which is expensive- if I can rarely find- imported ones. I still can imagine what kind of other ladyfingers-like biscuit to try out.

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