Tiramisu is traditionally made with ladyfingers dipped in coffee that are layered with a rich mascarpone cream. I like it because I love the coffee element of the dessert, and I also like the fact that it is so easy to put new flavor variations on it that it’s hard to get stuck in a rut with it. Rum and marsala wine often appear in tiramisu recipes, and I make a version with Bailey’s that I like. This time around, instead of playing with adding new flavors, I wanted to play around with the cheeses used to make the recipe.
This Ricotta and Cream Cheese Tiramisu uses a blend of ricotta and cream cheese in place of where a mascarpone-based cream would usually appear. The ricotta gives the cream a little bit of texture and lightens up the cream cheese, which adds a rich and tangy flavor to the ricotta. I kept my flavoring simple and added a little vanilla to the creamy filling and a little to the coffee mixture that I dipped the ladyfingers in. The finished dish had a lovely texture to it and was slightly more dense than other tiramisus, but it was also a bit more satisfying to dig into. The coffee flavor came through very well, too. This dessert is finished perfectly with generous dollop of lightly sweetened whipped cream to add a bit of extra sweetness and lightness every time your spoon picks up some of the cream with the rest of a bite.
I opted to make my tiramisus into single-serving sizes and put them into coffee cups to serve. As your coffee cups will probably differ in size from mine, I’m only approximating the number of ladyfingers that you’ll need to finish off your desserts. In general, you’ll probably need a couple of half-ladyfingers for the middle and bottom layers, and several whole ladyfingers to ring the desserts. If you prefer, you could assemble this in a small baking dish rather than as individual portions. The coffee mugs make for a great presentation – and also make the tiramisus very easy to hold if you choose to enjoy yours while watching a movie on the couch after dinner!
These need to chill for a few hours before serving to let the flavors meld a little bit. They will keep well for a day or two, covered, if you want to make them in advance. +Continue Reading
Ever since I got back from judging the Crisco 2010 National Pie Championships, I’ve been getting requests for recipes for Lemon Swirl Cream Cheese Pie, the pie that took home the best in show prize. The American Pie Council has posted the recipe on their site, but I couldn’t resist making it myself at home.
The pie is basically a cheesecake, with a cream cheese and egg-based custard filling in a pie crust. There are a couple of things that set it apart, however. The first is that there is a lot of lemon curd in the cheesecake filling, and there are swirls of lemon curd on top of the pie. The lemon curd is homemade with fresh lemon juice, so it packs a lot of lemon flavor. The second thing is the vanilla wafer and almond crust, which is crisp and substantial enough to hold up to the filling. The pie is easy to make, although you do need to make the lemon curd about 30 minutes ahead of time. As you would expect, the pie is also delicious and has a great combination of bright lemon and rich cream cheese flavors in a smooth, creamy base.
The presentation of the winning pie was better than mine is here. Not only did it have piped on whipping cream around the border of the pie, it was also garnished with fresh raspberries and thin lemon slices. Since mine isn’t going into a contest (just my stomach, more than likely!), I dispensed with some of the garnish. The only other note I’ll make about this pie is that the original recipe called for adding lemon extract into the filling. I felt that it really distracted me, since the pie is already packed full of flavorful lemon curd and definitely doesn’t need an artificial flavoring to improve on it in any way.
I happen to think that tiramisu is a great summertime dessert because it require any cooking and it is served cold. It is also great for entertaining because it can – and should -be made well in advance of when you want to serve it. The only drawback to a tiramisu as a summertime dessert is that it doesn’t make use of any of the luscious berries that are at their peak in the summer. You could say why not save the berries for another day? Today, however, I decided to simply incorporate berries into a tiramisu.
Strawberry Cheesecake Tiramisu is not a typical tiramisu. It does use coffee-dipped ladyfingers, but instead of a mascarpone cream, it uses a cream cheese-based cream to glue everything together. Since cream cheese is heavier than mascarpone, this makes the whole dessert a little bit more dense. That may sound like a bad thing, but in this case it serves to hold everything together and also makes the dessert taste a bit like strawberry cheesecake!
As a little experiment, I’ve posted a video of me making this dessert on YouTube so you all can see me prepare it. I tried to be brief, so the recipe below is actually a little bit more specific than the recipe as presented in the video. Still, it was fun to make and if you all like it, I’m planning to do some more (side note: I’ll be using a different camera in the future).
This dish tastes great, particularly after it has been in the fridge overnight and everything has really come together. I used berries from my local farmer’s market and they were super sweet, so the dessert didn’t need any added sweetened. If your berries aren’t, consider adding about a 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar to the cheesecake cream. Also, you’ll notice that I only dipped the ladyfingers in the coffee mixture for a second or two in the video. Mine were very absorbent, but if yours are drier, give them an extra couple of seconds to soak up the flavor, but be sure to get them out before they get too soft. +Continue Reading
The first time I was served kugel, I was very young and eating dinner at a friend’s house. Her mom made brisket and kugel for dinner and, while I liked the brisket, I kept clear of the kugel. A noodle casserole? A sweet noodle casserole? Were they kidding? Fortunately, her mom wasn’t offended that I didn’t want to try it right off the bat and managed to convince me to taste a bite.
I’m glad I did!
Kugel is a traditional Jewish casserole that can be made in a huge variety of different ways. It can be sweet or savory, and can be made with noodles, potatoes, matzoh, bread or other starches as a base – not entirely unlike a bread pudding. That first kugel I had consisted of egg noodles cooked with milk and cream cheese, sweetened lightly with sugar and cinnamon. I’ve had many other kinds, but this is still pretty much my favorite.
This recipe is one I put together after seeing a recipe in Bon Appetit a few years ago where the noodles were not precooked before adding them to the casserole dish. This saves a lot of time and the noodles cook perfectly as the whole kugel bakes. I use cream cheese, some sour cream and add vanilla and a bit of sugar to my kugel. The flavor reminds me a little bit of cheesecake, but the whole thing is pretty unique to kugel. I also add a topping made with crushed cornflakes (or bran flakes, whatever I have on hand), brown sugar and cinnamon, which gives the kugel a nice little crunch and an extra bit of sweetness.
I tend to make a batch of this around Hannukah – especially if I need something to bring to a potluck holiday dinner – but it is good all year round. It can be served both warm and cold, and makes for great leftovers, too.
A classic chocolate chip cookie is good, but sometimes it seems like they’re missing something. Something like a cream cheese filling that will lend the cookies a bit of cheesecake flavor and make them even moister and chewier than they would be without the filling!
The cookie dough for this twist on a classic chocolate chip cookie is a fairly standard cookie dough. It even bakes up into tasty cookies on its own if you don’t want to go for the filling. The dough needs to be chilled before you work with it so it is easy to handle, then individual chunks of cookie dough are flattened into discs and packed with a cream cheese and white chocolate filling. These cookies are huge, but with good reason. The cream cheese filling is soft when you compare it to the firm cookie dough and it’s easiest to wrap the dough around it when you’re working with a fairly large amount. Not that I heard any complaints about cream cheese-filled chocolate chip cookies being too big from anyone I shared these with!
These cookies are real crowd-pleasers and very satisfying to eat – thanks in large part to their size! The cream cheese filling has a nice tang to it and it contrasts well with the sweet, chocolaty cookie dough. The centers of the cookies may sink a little bit after baking, but as long as you take your time when wrapping the dough around the filling, every cookie should have a well-defined layer of cream cheese at the center.
