La Dolce Vita: Tiramisu Edition

Friday night the four of us took a cooking class at Scuola Cucina di Lella. One of the program leaders walked us twenty minutes through the city of Siena and down about seven escalators. Right? Escalators in the ancient cities of Siena whose heard of such a thing? Supposedly it was a crazy steep hill that called for hundreds of motion-censored escalators. Well, given my fear of these moving stair, my complete intolerance for anymore walking, and me and Joey’s short attention span and playful manner, we fell behind the rest of the group and ended up missing one of the turns leaving us in the middle of a dark and deserted city square for a good ten minutes. Finally after asking for information with my impressive Italian vocabulary (Di dove la (I admit I said escuela instead of scuola but it got the point across) cucina?) we found our program leader in her puffy white jacket. She looked kind of frantic that she counted 15 children instead of 19, whoops.


On the menu was pici all'aglione, gnocci al gorgonzola, and tiramisu. The open kitchen looked staged like it was the Rachel Ray Show. It was filled with pots, pans and wooden spoons of all shapes and sizes and every gadget and gizmo a "pampered chef" like my mother could ever dream of. In the kitchen stood Lella, our little old Italian cooking teacher, her silent partner (literally this little woman did not say a word she just moved swiftly around the kitchen cleaning our stations and shifting things around), and our translator the Italian Jack Osbourne, though I never got his I do know that he was a foreign exchange student and Lella was his host mother. So now he helps her out translating for her American cooking students. Aww, SO CUTE! And now for the food...


Since the tiramisu needs to form in the fridge we made that first. To make tiramisu you will need 4 eggs, sugar, mascarpone (which I finally found out is a kind of cheese.. or butter? I'm still unsure), lady fingers or another kind of cookie that absorbs liquids or flavors and stuff, espresso, whiskey, and cocoa powder. So here's what you do first:

1) Crack the eggs and separate the yolk from the white. You will be using both components so make sure you do not dispose of one or the other. In one bowl combine 3/4 a cup of sugar and the four egg yolks until they are thick and frothy (whatever that means).

2) Add 2 cups of Mascarpone to the mixture and blend with an electronic hand blender (or else ladies will look like Schwarzenegger) until you begin to see peaks

This next one amazed me. . .

3) Blend the four eggwhites in a NOT hand electronic blender on the highest speed. The next time I looked the eggwhites I have when I diet looked like a big bowl of snow! Just from being blended for a few minutes at an ultimate speed my least favorite part of the sunny side ups looked like the top of a lemon meringue pie. I was flabbergasted! (Lol) So fascinating.


4) Add the eggwhites to the mascarpone mixture by folding the eggwhites into the other. Not mix, fold! This is very important although I cannot tell you why.

Lady fingers covered the bottom of a huge lasagna tray. The fingers were soaked in espresso and covered with whiskey. If your not a whiskey person, Lella says that any kind of alcohol will do. Some people even use martini! This is the part that causes me to never order or eat tiramisu otherwise. I hate coffee! Ever since I was young and would throw something in the garbage to find a smelly trash bag with smelly coffee grinds I have never had the desire to drink coffee or any of its cousins (the frappuccino, the espresso, the latte). I'm strictly a hot coco girl. So while lady fingers would be right up my alley if i were ever to make this on my own, my fingers would be soaked in hot coco or something like it. Next issue is the whiskey. First of all what am I a pirate? Why would I ever like whiskey? I don't even like the cheap Svedka we get at school, ugh shivers! So again my version would cut out the whiskey and use apple juice. Just kidding, but seriously no whiskey no hard liquor at all. Vom.


Now that you have all of your preparatory work done cover the lady fingers with the mascarpone and eggwhite mixture. If you would like multiple layers (it's just funner that way- i know funner isn't a word but it is funner) don't use the whole mascarponey thing in one shot. Lella used a little American twist by sprinkling chocolate chips ontop of the layer and then adding a bit of cocoa powder. 

Repeat with more lady fingers and more mascarponey stuff along with more chocolate chips and cocoa powder as you please. This is a dessert to be eaten the same day and cannot be frozen (Mommie) because it will lose it's form or something. Put it in the fridge for at least an hour before serving and Benissimo! Tiramisu :0)

Will tell you about the pastas later. Desperate need of a nap! Out tonight for the last night out in Siena. Florence this weekend finally! Oh yeah, and SWITZERLAND the weekend after that!