TWD: Baking with Julia - Inside-Out, Upside-down Tirami Su

I love tiramisu, I think my affection for it came when I was a waitress at an Italian restaurant during college.  I am pretty sure it was the first place I ever tried it.  So, when this week's recipe was tiramisu, I was totally in for trying it.  It turned out to be something that completely changed the traditional tiramisu.  It tastes kind of like tiramisu, but did not look like it or have the right creamy texture that normally go with tiramisu.

It started out with a making frozen coffee granita, which was super simple to make, just espresso, milk and simple syrup, and stuck in the freezer.  After that was made I moved on to make the sabayon, which seems like a fancy word for custard.  It was egg yolks, sugar, milk and cinnamon, and it smelled delicious.  The recipe said that after cooking it for a few minutes to put it in a bowl of ice... I just stepped outside and let mine cool in a pile of snow that we had gotten over the weekend.  (Side note, our mailbox is being replaced after someone slid into it).  After it was cooled, I added whipping cream and mascarpone cheese.  Yay, mascarpone cheese, the essential ingredient in tiramisu!

Granita, I am going to have a lot left

Uncooked sabayon

the finished sabayon

After that was all ready, I baked some phyllo dough.  It said to cook a half slice in a four inch baking dish, and seeing how I need to make eight pieces and had one four inch dish, I just made little pillows and put them on a cookie sheet.

Finished phyllo pillows

After they were cooled, it was time for assembly.  My granita started to melt as soon as I scooped it out of the container.  Then I added heaping spoonful of the sabayon and topped that with another phyllo pillow.  Then more sabayon on top with some chocolate shavings and powdered sugar.  It completely started to melt before I could get a picture of it, it kind of turned into a soupy mess on me.  I probably needed to refrigerate the sabayon longer!

So, my opinion, I will probably never made this again, I ate it in about four minutes, but it is super rich, it is CRUNCH.Y., and I think I missed the rum, HA!   I would really like to try to make the traditional recipe someday, but after having this and all the sweet snacks over Christmas, I am going to have to think about doing that in about eight months!  It was fun to try!

For you non foodies, we really will write some other blogs about our adventures soon!