Shortly after making the Coffee Cake for Thanksgiving, I went looking for dessert recipes that involved coffee and buttermilk. I didn’t want to find anything that caused me to get 10 additional ingredients or anything, I wanted to use what I had, esp the buttermilk. I have two food blogs on my feed, Pioneer Woman and Smitten Kitchen. I searched both of those sites for a recipe and found the Tiramisu Cake. Not only did it look delicious, but it appeared challenging. I like a kitchen challenge. Thus began my odyssey for about a week to find mascarpone cheese. I finally found mascarpone at a local grocery, in their specialty cheese ‘boat’ near the deli. I call it the ‘boat’, because that’s what the person called it when I had googled.
I actually didn’t have the make the cake for an occasion, I was just making it to make it and use the buttermilk. I finally found time to make it the day I was going to be going to Kelly Clarkson. It wasn’t quite the rush job like the Coffee Cake, so I was able to take pictures of the process.
First the dry ingredients were mixed first.
BTW, I had a dilemma with the unsalted vs salted butter. I had bought both kinds (unsalted for baking and salted that I thought would be better for normal use), and had used quite a lot of the unsalted for different recipes I used (like the Bobby Flay biscuits I made earlier in the weekend), and the cake called for unsalted. I didn’t really want to go to the store for unsalted butter, so I portioned the butter and used probably 65% unsalted. Now I buy exclusively unsalted since now I have figured out the difference between the two, and don’t really notice a taste difference for normal use.
I greased and floured the cake pans. I’ve become quite good at it.
The wet ingredients came together and were ready to go quickly.
Of course, because I am one of the few people in the U.S. without a printer at home, I had my laptop open with all the instructions. I glanced at it quite often to make sure I was getting everything right.
The whole espresso extract thing, I just used the instant coffee I had. I was able to use my John Wayne coffee mug as a tool in this endeavor. The Kahlua is for the filling/frosting.
One thing I didn’t enjoy was washing the bowls DURING this operation. Maybe I should get more mixing bowls, but I’m just working with one set right now. Once the cakes were out of the oven, I put them on cooling racks and had to wait for them to cool so then I could ice them. (BTW, props to my friend Megan for passing down her extra cooling racks)
The ridges on the edge of the cake were from the parchment the recipe called to line the cake pans. I floured and parchment papered the pans, so maybe it was redundant, but I wouldn’t want to take any chances.
I pretty much just poured the syrup over the cakes, which kind of made a mess, but it worked. I might try something different next time. Getting the cakes from the racks to the plate was interesting, especially after they’ve been soaked with syrup. Making the filling and frosting was easy, and the mascarpone worked well. Once the cake was assembled, it went into the fridge to ‘set’ and left for the concert.
I got back probably at 11 pm and cut into the cake. It was excellent.
Sadly, I had to eat at least one piece of cake everyday during the week since I was going to be leaving for Nashville at the end of it. Don’t hate me.
I did end up with about 1/4 of it left after eating one piece a day and pawning off wedges to friends and family, and it still tasted fine when I got back. Win, win.
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