The Non-Frozen Cream Blizzard Model of Dessert

We've been meaning to get around to making tiramisu since we noticed ladyfingers at the supermarket, and last night we finally did it! That is, remembered in advance so we could check and make sure we had enough eggs and mascarpone. Wax looked at a bunch of different recipes. The authentic way to make the creamy layer is with raw egg and mascarpone, and because of this there's a widespread phenomenon of American recipes that use whipped cream instead so the result will include no raw eggs. Wax was warned that getting the texture to form stiff peaks in this layer would be tough because there's some egg yolks whipped in a hot water bath, mascarpone (independently whipped), and meringue, and then they're all folded together. (My research now tells me that the egg whites and whipped cream alike are later innovations and the original recipe was just sugar, yolk, and mascarpone, but we didn't read the Wikipedia article last night.)

Anyway, it's as delicious as I remember, and it definitely is better fresh and homemade (or I guess restaurant-made, as long as it wasn't made ages and ages in advance). And it's actually not really that elaborate, although using egg whites and trying to get the creamy filling to have a fluffy and airy texture makes the process a little longer. It's just whipping mascarpone and egg (or cream, if your raw eggs are a salmonella risk) and sugar and booze (you can use any strong liqueur and any sweet liqueur apparently - we used amaretto and cognac), then briefly dipping the cookies into strong coffee with booze in it and laying them in a dish, then spreading the cream out on top of them. It has to be refrigerated 6-8 hours to set up, and it set up beautifully, although the final texture is still puddingy and appropriate for eating from bowls in our case. You sift cocoa over the top before serving, and I kinda messed this part up with a sieve that wasn't fine enough, but it still tastes delicious.

Although the ladyfingers are arranged in a grid (if using a rectangular dish) and the dessert is assembled in layers, making it much more orderly, this is strongly reminiscent of two of my favorite desserts, Eton mess and trifle:

Dessert	Cake/Cookie	Creamy Part	Other
trifle	sponge cake cubes soaked in sherry	whipped cream	Fruit jam on sponge cake
Eton mess	crumbled dry meringue	whipped cream	macerated fresh strawberries in booze
tiramisu	ladyfingers soaked in booze and coffee	whipped mascarpone with egg or cream	cocoa powder on top

Trifle can be assembled in neat orderly layers too, but Eton mess is stirred up to evenly distribute the berries and meringue through the whipped cream, which also incidentally turns the whole thing pink. (As long as you use strawberries. If you use blueberries, you get purple.)

This is tagged 'recipes', but no recipes are actually included here because they're widely available and easy to find.