Chocolate with Francois - Chocolate Tiramisu

I'm back! A day late (and a dollar short!) but I have a legitimate excuse for not posting yesterday. I was at Richmond International Raceway with my Mother-in-law, attending the NASCAR race. She and I attend both Richmond races and the May race in Charlotte. We have been doing it since 1994. No hubbies. Just her and me. We make a full day of it, tailgating, people watching, hanging out. I think she enjoys it more than I do, and that's just fine with me. So, that explains why I didn't post yesterday. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :)

So, the April pick for CFW was Chocolate Tiramisu and Seattle Pastry Girl made it her pick. I don't know if I ever would have made it if she hadn't chosen it for April. I like Tiramisu. I made a Tiramisu cheesecake a while back. Just tried to find the post for it in my blog, but I guess I never blogged about it. :] I wish I had, and maybe I will one day. It's a great recipe and the cheesecake it made was fabulous. But, would I have chosen to make this recipe? I am not sure I would have. But, boy am I glad I did.

This was (is) a slightly complicated recipe. You have to make a ganache, a cake and a mousse. Then you have to put those three components together.

The ganache was pretty easy. Chop up some bitter-sweet chocolate, add some mascarpone cheese, and pour some boiled cream over and stir till the chocolate melts. I reread the recipe to see if it said "finely" chopped, when the chocolate that I just "chopped" didn't melt. But, no, I read it right. I ended up setting my bowl of clumpy, lumpy chocolate/cream/mascarpone on my burner which I set at low and stirred the mixture until it melted. Once it cooled down I tried it and found it to be most excellent!

I started on the cake next. After tasting the ganache again to make sure it was still okay. I am lucky enough to have two mixers so I was able to have the yolks and sugar mixing in one bowl while I whipped the whites in another bowl. The cake baked up in the 10 minutes recommended and was set aside to cool.

Making the mousse was a real test of muscle power for my arms. It took all of the 5 minutes, if not more, to first get the mixture of egg yolks and sugar hot and thick and then to get it cooled off, all while whisking it constantly, except when I stopped to check the ganache.

After tasting the ganache again I gathered all the components for the tiramisu to begin putting it together. Francois called for using a 1 or 1 1/2 quart bowl to assemble the tiramisu. I looked at my 1 1/2 quart bowl then tasted the ganache the amount of mousse, cake and ganache that I tasted again that I had on hand and decided to go with the largest bowl I had. Good thing too because more ganache it would have been far too much for a smaller bowl. More ganache Once I had ganache everything ready it took no time at all to assemble it.

I brew my coffee on the strong side but still added some Via to the coffee. I wanted to be sure that the coffee flavor was strong and didn't get lost in the cake and mousse and mmmm ganache. Once the tiramisu was assembled licked the bowl the ganache was in I covered it in plastic and put it in the fridge to cool.

I was pretty sure that I would like it. I wasn't sure about the hubby. He isn't a big coffee person and sometimes textures are an issue with him. I thought he might find the coffee soaked cake a turn-off. However, I worried for nothing. He said it was really, really good. In fact, he went so far as to say he thought it was one of the best recipes I have made from Chocolate Epiphany. The bowl I used, the large size of the Pyrex mixing bowl set I have, to assemble the tiramisu in? It was empty by the third day. Gone! All of it! I work most nights and without me here to portion control the serving sizes the hubby fixed much larger servings than I do and each night I got home, more and more of the tiramisu was gone. I think I might have gotten 1/4 of the amount there was, with the hubby eating all the rest. He asked me yesterday when I was going to make that Chocolate cake/pudding thing I made a couple of weeks ago. Men!

So, my advice to you is make this recipe. Seattle Pastry Girl has it posted on her blog. It the ganache is well worth the effort and dirty dishes it takes to make it. Fabulous dessert. Impressive dessert. Ganache filled dessert. Need I say more. :)