Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

A consequence of cucumbers

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

This fight is for everything.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Food / A Mid Evening Snack: Tiramisu

A Mid Evening Snack: Tiramisu

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I thought we could all use a mid evening snack! So here’s the tiramisu I made for a family dinner last week. Or what was left of it…

tiramisu

I learned this recipe from a a Spanish friend in Belgium. She was the wife of one of my aikido seniors and made it as a Sunday luncheon dessert one weekend when I was there training with my senseis (my original senseis were a husband and wife from Brussels). Anyhow, this is a very quick and easy recipe, but the results are rich and elegant.

Ingredients:
3 8 oz tubs of mascarpone cheese. (I use the regular, but sometimes you can find it coffee flavored and sweetened a bit. Both are made by Bel Gioso.)
3 eggs separated into whites and yolks
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp of vanilla
2 packages of the dry/hard lady fingers. (If you can’t find these, the following will do in a pinch: biscotti, nilla wafers, the soft/spongy lady fingers, pound cake, angel food cake.)
2 cups of very, very strong coffee or espresso.
Directions:
Separate the eggs into whites and yolks. Set the yolks aside and beat the whites until you have a stiff peaked meringue. Set the meringue aside in the fridge. Combine the yolks, the mascarpone, the vanilla, and the sugar in a mixer and whip until you have a smooth custard. Fold the meringue into the custard. Set the custard aside in the fridge. Cover the bottom of either a half hotel pan or a 9 or 10 inch round spring form pan with the lady fingers that you have individually dipped into the coffee. Then spoon 1/2 the custard onto the lady fingers and smooth out with a spatula. Cover this layer of custard with lady fingers dipped into the coffee. Then spoon the remaining custard on top and smooth out with a spatula. Traditionally you would then dust the top with cocoa powder. Then set into the fridge and let set up for at least two hours.
That’s it. Enjoy!
For those that prefer adding alcohol, which is sometimes done, add the coffee flavored or coffee flavor complimenting liqueur of your choice to the custard: Kahlua, Amaretto, or Baileys. If you’re really looking to get ferschnikerred mix them all into the custard!

Reader Interactions

82Comments

  2. 2.

    Roger Moore

    My big accomplishment for the day was finishing a batch of Seville orange marmalade. I got the oranges from my favorite vendor at the local farmer’s market; they’ve just come in season, and even then are only available on request. The basic recipe isn’t too complicated, but it is labor intensive. Juicing that many oranges- and the Sevilles are tiny compared to ordinary oranges- and julienning the peels is a lot of time and effort. Then there’s the fiddly bits around canning: making sure stuff is sterilized, getting the jars to seal right, etc. I tried the little bit that was stuck to the pot and didn’t make it into any of the jars, and the effort was worth it.

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    Looks tasty.

    Made a nice dessert yesterday to bring to a dinner party: Orange-infused chocolate ganache, poured into a tart shell and cooled, topped with slivered almonds. Mmmm.

  4. 4.

    Just one more Canuck

    When my daughter was 4 or 5 she was invited to a birthday party where they served tiramisu as the birthday cake – all the adults there thought “wtf?”

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Just got my Christmas card — correction, holiday greeting card — from the Obamas, including Malia, Sasha’s, Bo and Sunny. Seventh year in a row. Yes, I am well aware that the DNC picks up the costs and maintains the mailing list, and yes, I am also well aware that the only reason I’m on the list in the first place is that I have donated money and volunteered time to both the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns. Still, I dunno, I think it’s pretty nifty to get a holiday card each year since 2009 from the coolest First Family Ever.

  8. 8.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @efgoldman: It is my experience that people who use the word polymath, are.

    And I’m making a tiramisu. I’ve been toying with making the ladyfingers, or going to a good Italian market for them.

  9. 9.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    You would have to post this the same week that Weight Watchers debuted their new program, wouldn’t you? Sigh.

    When I took Italian, I was told that “tiramisu” translates as “help me up.” So even the Italians don’t consider it a light snack.

  11. 11.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: I’m a yondan/fourth degree black belt in aikido. I’ve also done Yang tai chi, specifically the original family martial set. I don’t do it as much as I should. I was taught how to punch by a neighbor who was a colleague of my Dad. He had been a boxer when he was in the Navy. I wrestled competitively for three years in high school. And, because of the aikido organization I belong to, I do yagyu ken and jo (sword and short staff) as an adjunct to the aikido. Also, because of who I’ve had the fortune to study aikido with I also do patrol kata with the jo and have experience with the tanto – both for attacks and take aways. I’ve also done a bit of the other Taoist arts: Pa Kua Chuan and Tsing I and am proficient in the Golden Flower exercise/type of chi kung.

    I had my own dojo at the US Army War College, where I was able to focus on different applications of aikido than in most dojos. I had a much older student base as they were the students in the residential class, some of their spouses, and a couple of the retirees and personnel assigned to the post. So we spent a lot of time working on strategic concepts of aiki, as well as practical applications. These were all folks that had seen a lot of war/combat zones over the previous decade or two, so I didn’t want to simply recreate Army combatives aikido style. This had a profound influence on how I approach the discipline. Moreover, my job for the military is, in many ways, a practical application of aikido as my organization’s master instructor teaches it. Establishing rapport, communicating, engaging all to achieve a more harmonious outcome.

    I am now helping a good friend of mine run his small dojo about ten minutes from where I’m currently living. Its working out well. We team teach a lot. And we’ve made a conscious decision to expose the students to things at the beginning of their time in training that we either didn’t learn or figure out for many years.

  13. 13.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @SiubhanDuinne: HGTV premiered the 2015 White House holiday deco-bakr-a-rama tonite. If you’re the sort who decorates your home a bit and would do it up more if someone else did the work, this is the vicariously decorated home of your dreams. Plus PBO and FLMO were in a few minutes of it being their cool, sincere selves. Look for reruns, likely every day, til the 25th.

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    @ThresherK (GPad): I use the Alessi ones that you can buy in the cookie/cracker aisle at the grocery store. Biscotti will work in a pinch, as will Nilla Wafers. If you have to use the latter, lay them out and use a pastry brush to apply the coffee.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): Sorry… My understanding is that the dessert was created by an Italian chef/pastry chef for English tourists. Apparently they were staying at the hotel/resort where he worked and preferred a more pudding/custard style dessert like they were used to at home. Leave it to the Brits to turn their noses up at gelato…

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): I wasn’t blaming you and I wasn’t offended. I am a pain in the ass. I’d like to be there’s usually a good reason for being one, but probably not all the time.

  24. 24.

    Adam L Silverman

    @ThresherK (GPad): Yes, yes they do. You can also use the Stella D’Oro original breakfast treats. I’ve used them when I can’t get the Alessi lady fingers. I’m pretty sure this was when I was out in mountains in New Mexico and had to get groceries at the Wal-Mart (which I hated, but it was either that or a two hour drive to Santa Fe, which seemed a bit excessive.)

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    Since this is a food-related thread, G introduced me to a fun British show he discovered on Netflix — “The Supersizers Go …” It takes a food writer and a comedian (Sue from “The Great British Baking Show”) and has them eat a period diet for a full week. It of course includes lots of gross foods like testicles and organs, because otherwise what’s the point?

    I was especially fascinated by the Elizabethan episode, partly because I’m interested in the period and partly because they both lost weight due to the very high protein content of just about everything they ate. Sue actually lost so much weight (4 kg) that the doctor told her to start re-gaining it immediately.

    ETA: Sorry, correction — G says it’s on Hulu. But they do seem to have full episodes on YouTube as well.

  27. 27.

    Roger Moore

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I hope you enjoy the fruits of your labors!

    I have 10 jars, so I should be enjoying the fruits of my labors for a while. Especially because this stuff is powerfully strong and I shouldn’t need as much of it as I would of less strongly flavored jam.

  30. 30.

    Yutsano

    Dear Adam: the alcohol is NEVER optional in tiramisu! At least a proper Italian one. Any coffee liqueur will do or even rum if you’re so inclined.

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yutsano: It depends. I’ve seen many argue you have to have it. Others that the original recipe calls for only day old, strong espresso or coffee. I’ve made it both ways.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: I saw that and the original LGM post on bad 70s cuisine/recipes that inspired it. I actually have a set of those Betty Crocker recipe cards.

  35. 35.

    PurpleGirl

    @efgoldman: I’m the one who actually named the cookbook I helped put together for my Lutheran congregation. Adam, it was a fundraiser to restore the E.M. Skinner pipe organ the church had. I looked through the book last night and found a couple of those types of “jello and ????” recipes.

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: Somehow I wound up with them from my Mom. Which is just as well as she could do a lot of damage with those things… I love my Mom dearly, but cooking is not her strong suit.

    I also have a UN Cookbook from the early 50s with a forward by Eleanor Roosevelt and a bunch of Cajun recipe cards that somehow showed up in the same box of stuff as the Betty Crocker recipe cards. Those are actually for things you’d want to eat.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @PurpleGirl: Did you raise the amount? Then its worth it. We have a Pioneer Women cookbook that my grandmother (Dad’s mom) was involved in putting together. Some of those recipes are really good, though a lot of them seem to require smaltz (chicken fat…). Sometimes those types of cookbook projects are worth more as a culinary history project of a community than for the actual recipes themselves.

  43. 43.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @efgoldman:

    She’s missing a few on the website that are in the book. I’ll have to dig out my copy. There are at least two that are even worse than mackerel pudding.

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It’s schmaltz. Yes, the words for “chicken fat” and “overly sentimental” are the same in Yiddish.

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    According to Wikipedia (so grain of salt), in German “schmalz” refers to any rendered fat, so it’s possible that a German Lutheran grandmother would use the word. Though it’s a mug’s game to assume that similar words in German and Yiddish are cognates –Amir’s gotten caught out that way a few times.

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: Too funny! When my grandparents would come and visit us, this was back in the 1970s into the mid 80s, she’d bring boxes of baked goods with her on the plane. She had one of those folding set of wheels and a handle carts that she’d stack them on and push or pull them through the aisle. And with her if you didn’t eat, you were sick. And if you were sick, that meant the thermometer with the vaseline on the end…

    My other grandmother really couldn’t cook well at all.

  51. 51.

    ? Martin

    Tip for gravy making: make schmaltz balls ahead of time and store them in the freezer. They last pretty much forever. Get some beef trimmings or turkey wings (for beef, turkey gravy) and render the fat, mix it with flour and roll it out into a ball. Put them in a bag and freeze them, and when you need to make gravy, just drop them in one at a time to thicken up. Really easy and convenient.

  52. 52.

    Roger Moore

    @PurpleGirl:
    Those “community cookbooks” may seem hokey, but in bulk they can tell you a lot about how people actually ate that is difficult to access any other way. My aunt collected them and donated thousands(!) of them to her alma mater, TWU, which has an extensive collection.

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @efgoldman:

    Okay, music guy — is there any reason you know of why I keep seeing melodicas everywhere on my teevee machine? I’m watching Friday’s Colbert show and his bandleader is using one, plus I think I’ve seen the Roots use them more than once. What’s with the melodica boom?

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: Its one of the many Jewish American communal/philanthropic organizations that sprouted up beginning in the late 19th and early 20th century. In most places Jewish Americans, as were other types of ethnic and religious Americans, were banned/barred from entry into even the secular communal and/or philanthropic organizations. So they started their own. The core of what would become B’nai B’rith originally started as a Jewish American equivalent of a college fraternity because Jewish American students were prohibited from joining the existing ones.

    The challenge for many of these groups, Jewish or otherwise, is surviving once the members of the community are given the privilege of being accepted into mainstream society and access to mainstream organizations. Of course a lot of these organizations, including the mainstream ones, are just hanging on as membership and participation falls off year over year.

    Harvard’s Bob Putnam would tell you that this is a failure of American civic society and is societally corrosive. I watched my polisci dissertation chair’s wife, who is a gerontologist, set him straight at a lecture when she explained to him that what he was observing was not a destruction of American civic culture and civil society, but rather the return to the historic American norm. A norm that had been disrupted first by the Depression and then by World War II. By the end of World War II, for the first time, the majority of Americans had options to not just be born, grow up, live, work, and die within 50 miles or so of their birthplace. As a result of Americans moving around because of new opportunities there was a spike in involvement in community and communal organizations – including joining religious congregations. Basically Putnam had started his time series far too late (immediately after WW II) and as a result had missed the actual historic trend line, which is American society is sort of anti-communal. Putnam, as I observed on a couple of other occasions when someone corrected him or suggested he missed something, got red in the face and blustered his way through the criticism. Two weeks later he wrote a piece for Newsweek where he plagiarized her argument. Literally presented it in his piece with no attribution as to where he got it.

    That’s not too surprising. His primary empirical theory was lifted almost completely from the Chicago School of Criminology’s classic neighborhood studies. I pointed this out to him at a colloquium the day before he got called on his time series and he got red in the face and tried to bluster through it by claiming he had never heard of this work. In a loud stage whisper I said something to the effect that I found it hard to believe that anyone who went through grad school when he did had not read Merton…

  58. 58.

    PurpleGirl

    @Adam L Silverman: As I remember the organ restoration cost close to $90,000 (circa 1983). It was either restore the Skinner or buy and get into a cycle of buying electronic organs forever more. I was a member of the church council and wanted to restore the Skinner. The cookbook didn’t raise the whole amount but it made a good start of rallying people to the task. I think restoring the Skinner was worth its cost.

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    As we’re (sort of) talking recipes, always get a chuckle at the first three words of the recipe for Martha Washington’s Great Cake:

    “Take 40 eggs”

    @citation – recipe (along with with a scaled down modern version).

  62. 62.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):
    Yiddish is a Germanic language, so there definitely are cognates between it and German. At least as many, I would guess, as there are between English and German.
    ETA: Many words used as slang terms for penis, in a lot of languages, also have a quite innocent meaning.

  63. 63.

    PurpleGirl

    @efgoldman: Trinity’s Skinner was built in Boston in 1926 and installed in Astoria in 1927. Sections of it were rebuilt in 1967 and then whole organ was restored in the 1980s. A comparable organ today would cost over half-a-million dollars. To my ears, it had/has a sound that is so beautiful. While I haven’t been a member of Trinity for more than 20 years now, I know they still pride themselves on having the Skinner and maintaining it. (I look at their web site every so often.)

  64. 64.

    James E Powell

    The directions say to dip the lady fingers the coffee. Are we talking a quick dip or are we letting the coffee soak in a bit?

  65. 65.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Amir Khalid:

    Like most Americans, I know quite a few Yiddish words but don’t actually know the language. Some of the loan words from German seem to almost parody the German meanings, which makes sense since Jews in Europe were pretty oppressed and probably would have enjoyed mocking the gentiles behind their backs.

  66. 66.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    Since the thread is dead, I’ll throw in one last random comment: someone mentioned that Dick Van Dyke’s current wife is very young, but she’s only “young” relative to his age — she’s 44, but he’s 90.

  67. 67.

    gene108

    Funny that this is the thread up after I woke up from my recent dream.

    It started with ordering dessert at a fancy dessert shop and then involved hanging out in a small town, whose residents were space aliens hiding as humans trying to get cackle home and then it got a bit weird.

    Anyway just found it interesting I woke up from a vivid dream that started off with dessert and when I go to Balloon Juice, as I try to fall back asleep the thread is about dessert.

  71. 71.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):
    Yiddish, the creole language of the Ashkenazim, was what Jews spoke in German-speaking lands. So naturally, much of it is German, with a heavy infusion of Hebrew. Did they change the meanings of some German words just to mock the Gentiles around them? Maybe they did; but in every language, many words undergo a natural drift in meaning over the years.

  73. 73.

    trollhattan

    TBogg on the Sandy Hook three-year anniversary. An excerpt:

    No one likes to think about it, but try imagining what it must be like for the families of the 26 killed to have one day — December 14 — be infinitely worse than every other day of the year. To have to tuck away somewhere in a dark corner of their consciousness, the knowledge that a member of their family was tracked down and slaughtered in an elementary school by a maniac armed with high-powered weapons that serve no purpose other than to kill humans.

    Then try imagining what those people must think of the rest of the country that — after a suitable period of mourning and dithering about what to do — did absolutely nothing because, in many ways, that is what we do best when confronted with tough decisions.

  74. 74.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @efgoldman: The Old South Church? I have been there for glorious performances on the last two First Nights.

    And I am interested enough in it generally, having had some lessons as a youth, used to be Catholic, Also I listen to the show Pipedreams more than a bit.

  75. 75.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):

    What’s with the melodica boom?

    As a not-very-musical cynic, my guess would be it’s the flavor-of-the-moment replacement for those hipster ukeleles. With the side benefit (sorry, Betty) that a trained musician can actually get something musical out of a melodica…

  76. 76.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman: Here’s the first google result I got for Pioneer Women:

    Pioneer Women, the Labor Zionist women’s organization in the United States—today called Na’amat—was officially founded in 1925. The new group sought to elevate the public profile of the halutzot (Zionist women pioneers) in the Yishuv (Palestine Jewish settlement community) and to help the pioneer women’s cooperatives in Palestine through American-based philanthropic efforts. Pioneer Women considered itself the sister movement in the diaspora of Mo’ezet Ha-Po’alot, the Palestine women workers’ movement. It embraced the latter’s vision of “expand[ing] the boundaries of the Jewish woman’s role” in the Yishuv and “secur[ing] her full and equal participation in the process of Jewish national reconstruction.”

    Pioneer Women also emphasized the importance of women in the American Zionist enterprise and provided a forum for working-class Jewish immigrant women who sympathized with the aims and ideals of socialist Zionism and the nascent Yishuv. In time, the organization opened up new channels of communication between the Palestine labor movement and the Jewish community in America. It became a significant force in American Jewish life and played a central role in American Zionism in the decades preceding the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948…

    I vaguely remember running across mention of the society when reading about NYC in the 1930s/1940s. Those Pioneer Women were alarmingly feminist, according to the worthy Jewish establishment fathers — and, of course, depressingly staid to their Trotskyite offspring!

    Too lazy to research further on a dead thread, but I’m pretty sure Bella Abzug was a member in her childhood, and I think Shirley Chisholm may have worked with members when she was getting her start in politics…

  77. 77.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @Anne Laurie: Hope I’m not predicting a retro trend, but before the popularity of the stand-up bass, and due to the direct descendence from marching bands, the tuba was the rhythm instrument of choice at the dawn of jazz a century and change ago.

    Think of that and shudder at the cacophony. Relieved that melodicas are the thing after ukes.

  82. 82.

    J R in WV

    @Anne Laurie:

    Try you-tube and search for Jake Shimabukuro! His “While a Guitar Gently Weeps” is very good. He also does classical works. Pretty amazing, really. Shows that most any instrument can do whatever a maestro demands of it. I saw a clip of his appearance on Japanese guitarist’s tv show, and they would talk for a minute, and then play together for a while, and be awed by each other for a few seconds, and so on. They agreed finally on which key is the saddest key (D minor), and then played a song that could rip your heartstrings. In D minor.

    And I see the Not-Max anticipated me. Jake is a master/maestro in every sense of the word.

    @ThresherK (GPad):

    And as a bass horn player, it can be done right. New Orleans is the center of the musical universe for old-style jazz, and many of those bands use tuba or sousaphone. Can’t march with a stand-up bass, can you?

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