WHO COULDN’T USE a little pick-me-up? I know I could. I’ve had a rough couple of weeks, which partly explains my recent lack of timely posting on this blog. I won’t get into that now, though, because you want the scoop on the dessert in the photograph. You, no doubt, are already anticipating a rise in spirit, because you’re aware that “pick me up” (at least in Italian) means one thing only in food world: that luscious, creamy cloud of caffeine-soaked bliss known as a tiramisu. Mmmm, feeling better already.

And beware, because this is also a Daring Bakers post, and that’s got to mean something extra good. This month’s challenge? Tiramisu entirely from scratch. Yes, you read that right. From scratch, completely. As in homemade ladyfingers and homemade mascarpone, to which you add zabaglione and two different creams to obtain the final filling for the dessert . . . which you then assemble with care and stare at in awe. (No, you don’t; you grab a spoon and tuck in.) Sounds like a lot of work for a home cook? It is. So much so that I have a confession to make upfront: I bailed on one of the creams. I did it because I was short on time. But really, when your dessert is already loaded with enough heavy cream to make investing in a dairy cow seem like a good idea, plus more eggs than your current cholesterol count can afford, well . . . I think everyone will forgive my slovenliness. Believe me, this dessert does not suffer for the lack one bit. You could even get a whole lot lazier and still come up with something stellar, so don’t let me (or my numeration of cream and eggs) scare you off.

Now, I love tiramisu. Love it. It’s a dessert I long ago decided was a perfect food. Perfectly ethereal and worth every whopping calorie. It’s also one I stopped ordering out in restaurants or purchasing from pastry counters, because back in the early 1990s, I found a recipe that’s both easy and very, very good. It’s from the cookbook Italy, a Culinary Journey: Classic Recipes from the Regions of Italy, which is included in my blog’s page of recommended reading, here. When you can make something easily at home that is far superior to what you end up with commercially, well—you look no farther. This tiramisu actually became the dessert that, for years, people most requested me to bring to parties or make for their special occasions. Once, I must have quadrupled the recipe at least, to make a giant tiramisu in the form of a sheet cake with a powdered-cocoa “30″ stenciled on it for a friend’s birthday. There are never any leftovers, believe me.

All this is to say, I feel loyal to this recipe, which is the real deal, and I would never consider betraying it with some traditional, coffee-flavored facsimile. Enter the green tea version of the Daring Bakers challenge recipe, which was a tiramisu from Baltimore pastry chef Carminantonio Iannaccone, as featured in the Washington Post (a link appears in the credits at the end of my recipe). Chef Iannaccone’s recipe stands out for a couple of reasons, say the challenge hosts: first for its use of zabaglione (Italian cooked egg custard traditionally flavored with Marsala), which incorporates pretty much the same ingredients as what’s in my beloved Italian cookbook yet removes the raw-egg factor; next for its addition of pastry cream and whipped cream in addition to the mascarpone. This, as I’ve already indicated, seems like overkill, but although I ditched the pastry cream, I did end up thankful for the whipped, which added back volume that I somehow lost in preparing my mascarpone and zabaglione. (Did I cook them each longer than required? The taste was amazing, and the consistency seemed right, so why did I end up short a few ounces?)

Veering from coffee to tea was no stretch, and once I hit on green tea, then ginger was not far behind. Lemon (juice or zest) was already a part of some recipe elements, so I really had very little tweaking to do in order to create a refreshing dessert version of one of my favorite potions—one that’s high in antioxidants, too. (You could almost convince yourself that this tiramisu is healthy.) A knob of ginger, a sprinkling of sweet matcha powder . . . and the TEA-ramisu is born.

You can read more about the Sweet Matcha Ladyfingers, a large part of this challenge, in my previous post.

As an enticement, here’s a better look at them:

A few words about the mascarpone, and then my final recipe. I found the idea of making mascarpone intriguing. I would never have thought to do it, though I generally take pride in being a from-scratch kind of gal. Somehow, mascarpone just seemed like an ingredient in its own right to me, more like a raw food than something you’d create. That’s idiotic, but nevertheless how I looked at it. Then I realized that I’d never even read the label on a tub of store-bought mascarpone; if I had, I guess I would have known that it’s nothing more than cream and citric acid. It’s worth mentioning, too, that although some folks would have you believe that a certain type of cream is better than another, my experience of this recipe is that it really doesn’t make enough difference to worry over. Use heavy cream, it’s fine; use ultra-pasteurized, that works, too. It’s all damn good.

Making the mascarpone (the recipe is included as a method step below) is not particularly difficult, but it does help to have the right equipment. Some notes: First, although the recipe I was following calls for putting a heat-resistent bowl into a shallow skillet of boiling water (yes, the bowl touches the water) in order to heat the cream, I advise you to go ahead and use a regular double-boiler or its equivalent. Do yourself a favor and make sure the bowl in which you heat the cream is stainless-steel (no Pyrex). Otherwise, like me, you may spend way more time than needed to bring the cream to the right temperature, and who really has an extra half hour? (Speaking of temperature, you’ll have more confidence with the help of a kitchen thermometer; the original recipe provides some guidance about getting by without one, but I am not including that here, since really there’s no good reason why you don’t have a thermometer, is there? Go get one; it’s a great investment.)

One final tip: if the mascarpone seems too loose for the cheesecloth and sieve (or if the opposite is true and its the cheesecloth that seems loose), do what I did and slip a paper coffee filter between the sieve and the cheesecloth. It worked like a charm.

Now that I have gone through the process, I know what to expect. I will say that—especially with the ginger I added—store-bought mascarpone can’t hold a candle to homemade. I’m very likely to make my own from now own, plus I’ll be doubling the recipe. Can’t have too much of a good thing. Which goes for the Lemon-Ginger Zabaglione I created, and the whipped cream as well (all three pictured below). In fact, once I return to my coffee-flavored standby tiramisu, I may even try to incorporate some of what I’ve learned here. A compliment I never thought I’d give, but there you go. Thank you, Daring Bakers.

Fresh Ginger Green Tea-ramisu

The sweetened heat of ginger, the refreshing zing of lemon. These flavors come together in an ethereal cloud of bliss held together with homemade matcha ladyfingers that are steeped in brewed green tea—nothing could be better. This recipe requires some advance planning, but it’s well worth it. Two to three days should do it, though most of that time is not “active” but rather chill time for the individual components and for the assembled dessert. Once put together, this Tea-ramisu will keep in the refrigerator for a couple days, and you can also pop it in the freezer, making it the ideal choice if you need a unique make-ahead dessert to free you up on the day of a party. Prepared cake-style, or served with a dash of whimsy in individual teacups, this is a recipe certain to impress guests (if you can bring yourself to share).

Yield: Serves 6-8

Ingredients:

1 recipe Sweet Matcha Ladyfingers (can be made up to 2 weeks ahead)

1 cup Ginger Mascarpone (recipe included in method below), made with:

• 2 cups organic whipping cream (heavy cream is OK, and if you can find it easily, try pasteurized rather than ultra-pasteurized, though either is fine)
• 2-inch knob of fresh ginger, peeled and thickly sliced
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1/3 cup Lemon-Ginger Zabaglione (recipe included in method below), made with:

• 2 egg yolks
• 3 Tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup good-quality dry white wine
• 1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 cup heavy cream, for whipping

1/2 cup plus 4 Tablespoons granulated sugar, divided

2 cups brewed green tea, cooled to room temperature

Sweet matcha powder for garnish

Method:

Two to three days in advance of serving, make the Ginger Mascarpone. Bring water to a simmer in the base of a double-boiler. In the top of the boiler, pour the cream and add the slices of fresh ginger. Heat the cream, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until it reaches 190 F. This is supposed to take around 15 minutes. Add the lemon juice and heat, gently stirring, until the cream thickly coats the back of your spoon. You may see some curdled whey streaks when you stir. Turn off the heat. Remove the top of the boiler containing the cream and let cool for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, line a sieve with four layers of damp cheesecloth and set this over a bowl. If your cheesecloth is a loose weave, you may want to first line the sieve with a paper coffee filter. Strain the cream into the sieve, discarding the ginger. Do not squeeze the mascarpone or press on its surface. When completely cool, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate (still in the sieve over the bowl) overnight or up to 24 hours. The mascarpone should be used within 3-4 days. [A note from Vera, the original recipe-writer: "The first time I made mascarpone I had all doubts if it’d been cooked enough, because of its custard-like texture. Have no fear, it will firm up beautifully in the fridge, yet will remain lusciously creamy."]

One to one-and-a-half days in advance of serving, make the Lemon-Ginger Zabaglione. In the top of a double-boiler, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, wine, ginger, and lemon zest. Place over low heat, stirring constantly until you obtain a thick custard, about 8-10 minutes. Remove from the heat. Once cooled, transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

One half hour before assembling the Tea-ramisu (the day before serving), place a bowl and beaters into the freezer to chill. If you want to create a Tea-ramisu that you can unmold for presentation on a serving dish, then butter the bottom and the edges of a small spring-form pan and line with parchment paper. Set aside. Remove bowl and beaters after they’ve chilled for about 15-20 minutes, and pour 1 cup cream into the bowl. Add in 4 Tablespoons granulated sugar. Beat on high speed until fully whipped.

Make the Tea-ramisu filling. In a large bowl, lightly beat the mascarpone to soften and smooth it just a bit. Do not overbeat, or you risk making butter! Then, using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, blend together the mascarpone, zabaglione, and whipped cream until incorporated.

Assemble the Tea-ramisu. Place the brewed green tea, mixed together with remaining 1/2 cup sugar, in a shallow pan or pie plate. One at a time, dip the matcha ladyfingers quickly into the tea, no more than a second, and use to line your serving dish, spring-form pan, or individual ramekins or teacups. Remember if you’re going to unmold the Tea-ramisu from a spring-form pan, that the bottom of the pan will become the top of the dessert; plan for the final look you want to achieve. Once you have a layer of ladyfingers in place, use about half the filling, then add more ladyfingers. Alternate layers of dipped ladyfingers and filling until dish is full. This may just be two layers of each element, depending on the size of your chosen dish. When you’ve finished, cover the Tea-ramisu with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 24 hours before serving.

When thoroughly chilled and just before serving, dust the top of the Tea-ramisu with sweet matcha powder.

Credits and Original Recipe Links:

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate about Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home, and Baking Obsession.

Links to the original recipes, which I adapted to create my own flavor variations, can be found here:

• Carminantonio Iannaccone’s Tiramisu, as featured in the Washington Post
• Baking Obsession’s recipe for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese, by Vera
• Le Cordon Bleu at Home Ladyfingers recipe (Buy the book, or check out my adaptation from which you can easily calculate the original)

Steep some lady’s-fingers nice in Candy wine [ . . . ] And sponge my forehead,—so my love doth make me pine.

— John Keats, “The Cap and Bells; or, The Jealousies: a Faery Tale – Unfinished” (1820)

LADYFINGERS: remedy for the lovesick heart? Perhaps, if you’re a fairy king enamored of a mortal lady, as is the speaker in the lines above. Keats’s poem, which I found through an entry on ladyfingers at joyofbaking.com, is a halfhearted, satirical look at boozy court antics. It’s hardly his best writing, but why be critical? If for nothing else, I appreciate the poem for its mention of these delicate biscuits, which indeed have a soothing effect—especially when dipped in wine, syrup, or liqueur (though my recipe here is meant for green tea). At least, they’re soothing to eat; not necessarily to make from scratch. Ladyfingers, as with other génoise-type pastry, can be challenging. Still, they’re definitely worth their place in literature and in my baking repertoire.

A Little History

The creation date of the first ladyfinger recipe seems to be up for debate, though by all accounts they’ve been around for hundreds of years. Some sources point to the fifteenth century, others to the eleventh. Either way, they’re associated with the French court at Savoy. From there it’s not much of a leap to imagine these refined biscuits at Versailles, in the hands of that notorious lover of gourmandises, Marie Antoinette. Happily, this classic cross between a cookie and a cake survived the Revolution, becoming an indispensable part of the modern French culinary repertoire. Ladyfingers are the spongy sine qua non of luscious, mousse-filled charlottes, and they’ve no doubt been on the curriculum at Le Cordon Bleu since the legendary school’s inception. (It’s from Le Cordon Bleu At Home that my own recipe adaptation derives.) Jumping national borders, ladyfingers have been given pride of place in a more modern Italian confection: that cloud of dessert decadence known as tiramisu. And finally, because of their lack of chemical leavening, ladyfingers have become popular in Jewish homes during the Passover holiday season (although I hear that devout Jews prefer to call them by one of the other, less immodest names).

By Any Other Name

A ladyfinger, by whatever name, is still . . . delicious. Also known as Savoiardi, boudoir biscuits (more Romantic antics?), or biscuits à la cuillère (French for “spoon biscuits”), ladyfingers are light, crisp sponge cakes, shaped like . . . well, like fingers, though I’d quibble with the “lady” part; they are not slender enough for that, to my mind. Or else they’re the fingers of a lady who’s eaten too much salt, or who is suffering a bad bout of PMS. The kind of fingers my mother and I used to call “lard digits,” don’t ask me why. Another crazy family joke, and an unnecessary digression. Forgive me.

Bag It!

Before going further, I want to be clear about one thing: there is no shame in purchasing ladyfingers for your charlottes, trifles, tiramisu, or other composed desserts. I have used store-bought ladyfingers since the early 1990s, when I first began making traditionally flavored (coffee) tiramisu. My mother-in-law, a proper Frenchwoman with her own excellent recipe for chocolate charlotte, also uses commercial biscuits. If you’re serving a dessert to guests, I promise you that (unless they’re the worst, snottiest kind of “foodie,” and then why would you want to feed them at your house?) they will not care one bit if you use store-bought fingers or make your own, so long as the final dessert is light, creamy, sweet, and steeped in spirits.

So, why bother?

Well, making them from scratch feels like a rite of passage, for one thing. It’s also good practice for using a pastry bag, though that can be a bit humbling. (I realized that despite thinking of myself as a fairly accomplished baker, my bag skills . . . kinda suck. Maybe not horribly, totally, completely, but still: however did my ladyfingers end up with so many air bubbles and pointy tails?!)

Another reason to make your own ladyfingers is that when you buy from the store, you have no choice of flavors. There is only one: plain vanilla. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But sometimes, you really want to do something different. Making your own ladyfingers allows you to experiment in ways that go beyond just tinkering with dessert fillings. Whole worlds of flavor combinations open up once you do this.

Teatime Tradition

Riffing on flavor is how I ended up with this recipe—well, plus the extra push I got from the Daring Bakers group. I developed my next post, Fresh Ginger Green Tea-ramisu, in response to their February 2010 challenge, and working on that is what led me to give matcha a try in these ladyfingers. It was a natural leap for me. Tiramisu is fabulous, and I am a big fan of coffee as a flavoring for sweets (recall last month’s Nanaimo Bars), but I wanted to experiment more, and I’m also a tea lover. You can find quite a few tea-based recipes in my collection, such as Blue Grey Chocolate Truffles and White Tea Rose Shortbread Cookies, plus others that haven’t made their appearance on the blog yet. Coffee, tea, and me, we all go way back.

Green tea is a favorite, and creating a version of ladyfingers to highlight that ingredient couldn’t be easier. These days, you don’t have to look farther than Whole Foods to find Japanese green tea powder, known as matcha. Sweet matcha is shade-grown green tea that has been ground into a fine powder and combined with milled cane sugar, sometimes also with roasted “genmai” brown rice. You can use it to make beverages such as lattes or lemonade, or else you can substitute it for a portion of granulated sugar in the baked treat of your choice. Matcha is also used to make green tea ice cream.

Of course, green tea powder is really green, so you want to be sure that wherever you use it, the color isn’t offensive. It didn’t take much matcha to color the whole batch of ladyfinger batter. I liked the results, but it’s also true that my piped biscuits looked less like fingers and more like plump caterpillars waiting to get baked off in the oven. Things tone down considerably in the end, though, as you can tell from the picture at the top of this post. I did nothing to manipulate color in these photographs, and the green went from quite saturated in the unbaked ladyfingers to barely detectable in the finished product. The green is still there, but you don’t see it until you reach the interior.

Makes for a lovely surprise, actually, and I guess in the end that’s probably the best reason for undertaking a kitchen project of any kind. So I hope you’ll give these a go, or, if green tea’s not your thing, then maybe you’ll be inspired to create other, fresh variations on the classic ladyfinger. You really can’t go wrong—but if you do (provided at least the flavor is good), just smother your “fingers” in cream, layer them in a trifle or tiramisu, and enjoy a cure for anything that ails you, even love.

Sweet Matcha Ladyfingers (Savoiardi)

Adapted, ever so slightly, from the ladyfinger recipe in Le Cordon Bleu At Home

East meets West with this ladyfinger recipe, a French classic infused with Japanese green tea. The health properties of green tea are by now well known. Matcha also plays a central role in the spiritual practice of Zen, as it is used in formal tea ceremonies. For this recipe, be sure to use sweet matcha, which is green tea powder blended with milled cane sugar. I swapped half the granulated sugar called for by Le Cordon Bleu with an equal amount of sweet matcha powder. You could certainly try more or less, but again: make sure you are using sweet matcha (Rishi is a good brand). The ladyfingers are lovely on their own, or they can be used instead of store-bought fingers in your favorite trifle, charlotte, or tiramisu recipe as a way to experiment with flavors.

Yield: approximately 24 large or 45 small (2-1/2 to 3-inch long) ladyfingers

Ingredients:

3 eggs, separated

3 Tablespoons granulated sugar

3 Tablespoons sweet matcha powder

3/4 cup cake flour (or see notes for making your own)

6 Tablespoons confectioner’s sugar

Method:

Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, then preheat the oven to 350 F degrees. Lightly butter two baking sheets and line with parchment paper.

Beat egg whites using a handheld electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Mix together the granulated sugar and sweet matcha powder, then gradually add to the egg whites and continue beating until the whites become stiff again, glossy and smooth.

In a small bowl, beat the egg yolks lightly with a fork and fold them into the whites, using a wooden spoon. Sift the flour over all, and fold gently until just incorporated. At this stage, you want to take great care and fold with a gentle motion. If folding is done too long, or too vigorously, then the batter will deflate, and you’ll end up with fat, very flat fingers of a sad consistency.

Fit a pastry bag with a plain tip (or you can use a Ziplock bag with a small corner snipped off), and fill the bag with batter. Pipe long, narrow strips of batter, leaving a 1-inch space between the ladyfingers.
 Sprinkle half the confectioner’s sugar over the ladyfingers and wait 5 minutes. The sugar will pearl or look wet and glisten. Now sprinkle on the remaining sugar. These two coats give the ladyfingers their characteristic thin, crisp crust.
 The Cordon Bleu recipe suggests that next you hold the parchment paper in place with your thumb, lift one side of the baking sheet, and gently tap it on the work surface to remove excess sprinkled sugar. I tried this, and frankly, nothing happened. It didn’t seem to hurt the recipe any.

Bake ladyfingers for 10 minutes, then rotate the sheets and bake for another 5 minutes or until the ladyfingers puff up, turn lightly golden brown, and are still soft.
 Allow them to cool slightly on the sheets (no more than 5 minutes). Remove ladyfingers from the baking sheet to cooling racks with a thin, flexible metal spatula. When completely cool, store ladyfingers in an airtight container until you are ready to use them. They should keep for about 2 to 3 weeks.

A Note on Making Your Own Cake Flour:

Don’t have cake flour handy? Forget the extra trip to the grocery store. To make 1 cup of cake flour, measure 1 cup of all-purpose flour, then remove 2 Tablespoons, which you won’t be using. Place the flour in a sifter and add 2 Tablespoons of cornstarch. Sift together at least three times to properly blend and aerate the flour. Ta-da! Cake flour.