We tried to keep busy yesterday in our first full day of social distancing. One of our young adult sons – home from cancelled University needed a distraction so we encouraged him to make his favourite dessert – Tiramisu.

Tiramisu is a sophisticated dessert, but can be fairly easy to assemble. With this recipe, he needed to have marscapone cheese and ladyfingers. These are not ingredients that we typically have in our pantry or fridge though – but in this case we had planned to make this as part of our “nesting” project.

Tiramisu Ingredients:

5 Egg Yolks

5 tbsp Granulated Sugar

1 475g container of Marscapone cheese

24 Ladyfinger biscuits

1 1/2 cup brewed Espresso coffee

Cocoa – to sprinkle

Tiramisu Preparation Directions:

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar using a hand mixer. Gently add the marscapone cheese and continue mixing until the mixture has a custard-like texture.

Fill a mixing bowl with brewed coffee – dip each Ladyfinger briefly in the coffee and then cover the bottom of a serving dish with one layer of (dipped) biscuits. – We used an 8 by 11.5 baking dish. (I believe there was some consumption of coffee dipped ladyfingers). Note that if you soak the biscuits for too long they will turn to mush and be difficult to arrange in the dish!

After the bottom of the dish is completely covered, add one half of the marscapone mixture – spreading over the top of the biscuit layer. We left a little bit of space between each biscuit – so that more marscapone could seep through. You can try and squeeze in more biscuits if you prefer.

Repeat this process – adding another layer of coffee dipped biscuits and then apply the remaining marscapone cheese over the top. Place the assembled Tiramisu in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours. When you are ready to serve, sprinkle cocoa powder across the top.

We enjoyed this Tiramisu – it was nice and light (or so it seemed) and refreshing.

If I were out of a few things and wanted to try to cheat on this recipe a little – I would consider switching out the cream layer for a vanilla pudding, or using the custard from the banana cream pie recipe. My son, being a purist says that wouldn’t be right at all, but I still might! Marscapone is difficult to find around here – and about $13 for a small container! You could definitely switch out the Espresso coffee for just some strong brewed coffee, but I think the Ladyfingers are essential! If you are out of cocoa you could decoratively drizzle some chocolate sauce across the top……