Tiramisu

Tiramisu is one of the most popular desserts around the world. Here, we have our take on this light and creamy Italian dessert, which is quite easy to prepare too. Since it is difficult and expensive to find mascarpone cheese here in the Maldives, we have substituted it with cream cheese, which tastes just as good with the coffee flavour. 

As for the coffee, we have used Bon Aroma Classic Instant Coffee, provided to us by one of our partners, Araaby. The Bon Aroma Classic Instant Coffee is rich and has a nice, buttery, nutty flavour. It also smells really good when preparing, making the experience even more delightful. You can make many coffee variants from this, such as iced coffee, black coffee, latte, cappuccino, or even use it in different recipes like this.

Serving size: one 6x6-inch tray

Ingredients:

For the coffee

• 3 tbsp Bon Aroma Classic Instant Coffee
• 1 cup hot water

For the egg custard

• 3 egg yolks
• ¼ cup sugar
• 1 ½ cup water

For the tiramisu cream

• 250g cream cheese
• ½ cup whipping cream
• 1 tbsp sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla essence

For assembling

• 12 lady finger biscuits
• 1 ½  tbsp cocoa powder

Instructions:

1. To prepare the coffee, mix together 3 tbsp Bon Aroma Classic Instant Coffee and 1 cup hot water in a medium-sized bowl. Set it aside.
2. Next, make the egg custard. To do this, first add 3 egg yolks and ¼ cup sugar to a glass bowl. Then, using a hand-held electric mixer, on low speed beat the yolks and sugar for 20 seconds or just until combined.
3. In a small pot, heat up 1 ½ cup water on low heat for 2 minutes or until steaming (the pot should be smaller than the bowl with egg yolks and sugar, so that it can sit nicely on top of the pot). Once heated, place the glass bowl on top of the water pot, to make a double boiler.
4. Then, using the hand-held electric mixer, on low speed,  continue to beat the egg yolks on the double boiler for 4 minutes or until it becomes thick and creamy like a custard. At this point, the mixture will be a pale yellow in colour, and most of the sugar should have dissolved.
5. Remove the custard bowl from the top of the pot and add in 250g cream cheese. Now, using a whisk, mix together the cream cheese and egg custard for 2 minutes or until smooth and creamy, with no lumps. The mixture will be almost white in colour by now. Set aside.
6. Next, to new bowl, add in ½ cup whipping cream and using a hand-held electric mixer at medium speed, whip the cream for 2-4 minutes or until it reaches soft peaks (soft peaks mean that when you take the beater out of the whipping cream, the beater should have peaks that barely hold their shape and flop easily).
7. Then, add in 1 tbsp sugar and continue to whip for another minute on low speed or until stiff peaks form (stiff peaks mean that when you lift the beaters from the mixture, the peaks hold their shape).
8. Add the whipped cream to the cream cheese-custard mixture and fold in using a spatula for around 1 minute, until evenly combined. Then, add in ½ tsp vanilla essence and fold again for 30 seconds, until fully combined. The tiramisu cream is now ready.
9. To assemble the tiramisu, spread around 3 tbsp of the tiramisu cream on the bottom of a container or tray. We used a 6×6-inch square glass tray.
10. Then, dip one lady finger biscuit in the coffee that was prepared earlier – one at a time – for just a second on each side (the coffee should be room temperature by now). Arrange the biscuits at the bottom of the tray as you go. Be careful not to fully dunk the biscuits or dip for longer than a second as it will absorb the coffee very quickly and get soggy.
11. After covering the bottom of the tray with the biscuits (we used 6 pieces), evenly spread half of the tiramisu cream on top.
12. Then, repeat the process one more time, adding one dipped biscuit layer and the last of the tiramisu cream. When done, there will be two layers of biscuits and cream each.
13. Lastly, using a small sifter, dust 1 ½ tbsp cocoa powder on top of the cream, until the surface is fully covered.
14. Cover the top of the tiramisu tray with food wrap or a lid, and let it set in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or overnight. Enjoy!