Tiramisu and you.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, Lamar Clark-Gainous and I decided to make Tiramisu cake on our own. We are big fans of this delicious Italian coffee cake, so we thought, why not? We both have often wondered how do they make Tiramisu look like that and taste so great? If you have never eaten or seen the amazement known as Tiramisu, this is what it looks like:

So, we hit up the Muncie Meijer and began our quest for Tiramisu ingredients. The recipe calls for common items such as eggs and milk, but we sought unique ingredidents as well, such as "lady fingers" and "Mascarpone cheese," among others. We even had to venture to Starbucks to obtain espresso, which definitely makes the dessert!

This little container is the Marscarpone cheese, which is pretty much flavorless and odorless by itself. While mixing this with the other ingredients, we hit roadblock #1 - we couldn't find one of the two mixers for the electric mixer. Our mixture was a fluffy "ice cream in appearance" concoction.. nowhere near the creamy texture we needed. However, we looked and looked for the mixer until luckily, it was found!

We ended up with this delicious mixture.

Unfortunately, we hit roadblock #2! This dealt with an event in the house, which pushed our cooking back about an hour and a half.. but never fear, for we refrigerated our progress and took a small break.

Then, it was time to mix Kahlua and espresso..

You can see nothing but pure concentration here. Haha.

Next, we dipped the lady fingers in the Kahlu, and poured the creamy mixture making two layers.

Doesn't it just look painfully delicious?

As you can see above, we unfortunately did not have an 8x8 square pan, which the recipie called for. All Tiramisu I have ever seen has been square, so we definitely hit roadblock #3 - but we carried on and made our wonderful circle pan work!

And finally, despite a few roadblocks and after more placing of the dipped lady fingers and cocoa powder sprinkling, we have the finished product!

 
Our lovely dish couldn't be eaten right away because our precious Tiramisu needed to sit for several hours in the refrigerator. But I must say... it made for a perfect breakfast the following morning, and a perfect way to focus on the Valentine's Day spirit. :)

Mondays are busy, with my schedule going from about 6:20 a.m. - 9:30 p.m. at night. So, it was nice to sit back and relax and basically celebrate Valentine's Day on Saturday, with the one I love. The Tiramisu was delicious, and the fun we had was ultimately sweeter than the dessert we made. (wasn't that almost as cheesy as marscarpone cheese?) ;)