Chocolate Tiramisu - Chocolate With Francois

The past couple of CWF recipes have been "easy" in comparison with most of our CWF recipes. While I wouldn't say this month's recipe was particularly difficult, it did have the typical CWF characteristics. The recipe was made up of lots of steps and an equally large amount of bowls and utensils. I made it over two nights, not sure how long it took but let's just say this isn't a quick dessert to put together!

Tiramisu is one of my favorite desserts. It's one of the ways I judge an Italian restaurant, great Tiramisu is a sign of a good Italian restaurant. Now I am not sure I've ever had Chocolate Tiramisu, so I guess I would consider myself a Tiramisu purist. Traditional Tiramisu is made with lady fingers and doesn't have any chocolate. I was curious if chocolate could make one of my favorite desserts even better.

Knowing it was very rich and having read some of the other CWF baker's comments about how delicious it was, I made a fourth of the recipe. The cake requires both egg whites and egg yolks. My egg whites never quite reached the stiff peak stage. I even tossed in a pinch of cream of tartar but still no stiff peaks. I decided to go for it and luckily my cake turned out fine. The ganache called for chopped chocolate. I think it should have said finely chopped chocolate. My chocolate wasn't melting when I combined it with the cream. I put it in the microwave for about 20 seconds and the chocolate melted perfectly. Once you have the cake, ganache and marscapone mixtures made, it's a relatively easy dessert to assemble.



Payard says the dessert gets better after sitting overnight, which makes sense as this gives the flavors a chance to meld. I tried it the night I made it. I thought it was good, not great. Of course the ganache was amazing but isn't it always!!! Thanks to Sandy of Seattle Pastry Girl for choosing this month's recipe. You can find the recipe on her blog! You can check out the other CWF baker's Tiramisu here!!