I Tried Nigella Lawson's Secret To The Best Tiramisu, And I'm Addicted
Assembling a tiramisu on the left: completed on the the right
OK, so I might like to include my own spin on TV chefs’ carrot cake, brownie, and rocky road recipes.
But don’t mistake my occasional additions for celeb cook scepticism – I follow Nigella Lawson’s scone recipe and Mary Berry’s apple crumble to the tee every time, for instance.
Sometimes, after all, the pros just know better. Such is the case, it turns out, with Nigella’s tiramisu recipe.
Her spin on the classic dish sounds, she says, “like some sort of joke – ‘Did you hear the one about the Irishman and the Italian...?’”, but tastes like an “elegantly buff-tinted, creamy-toned variant of the punchy, if comfortably cliched, original.”
After giving her recipe a go, I’ll never go back.
The completed tiramisu
Nigella adds Baileys to her tiramisu’s dip
The TV chef dips her savoiardi biscuits not in the classic plain coffee, but in a java and Baileys combo.
I didn’t have Baileys to hand, but I did own a bottle of Coole Swan Irish cream liqueur, which does the same job.
After dipping some of the biscuits in the mixture on all sides until they’re “damp but not soggy,” I lined the base of a baking dish with them.
Then, I whisked egg yolks with sugar before adding mascarpone cream and the rest of the cream liqueur; in a separate bowl, I whisked an egg white until it became frothy and folded that into the creamy mixture too.
Half of this goes over the first layer of soaked savoiardi; then, you’re meant dip and layer the rest of the biccies, add the rest of the mascarpone mix on top, and refrigerate it, covered in clingfilm, overnight.
I’ll admit I didn’t wait long enough to rest the tiramisu and regretted it; don’t let your impatience get the better of you, as it’ll leave the biscuits too solid.
You should only sprinkle the decorative cocoa on top at the last minute.
Irish cream liqueur on the left: tiramisu on the right
And?
No wonder Nigella says the recipe converted her Italian friend. The recipe is, as the chef writes, a prime example of how cream liqueur can “best be called upon in the kitchen”.
The deceptively simple assembly results in a deeper, creamier, vanilla-tinged dessert; the booze imparts a subtle cocoa flavour, too.
As I said above, I didn’t rest the pudding for long enough for the biscuits to become spongy and meltingly soft, but after returning to dessert to the fridge for a few hours, I reckon it led the the best tiramisu I’ve ever tried.