Tiramisu Cake

I had a big party at my apartment on Friday which included tons of Italian dishes and desserts. For dinner I made 3 pasta dishes including pesto, vodka sauce, and red sauce as well as eggplant Parmesan, chicken meatballs, cheddar chive biscuits, and an eggplant Caesar salad! The food was so delicious and the company made it that much better! Now, on to the desserts... The next few posts will include the desserts I made for Friday night. First up, Dorie Greenspan's Tiramisu Cake. I figured a Tiramisu would be a nice compliment to my Italian meal so I flipped through Dorie's "Baking: From My Home To Yours" hoping to find something down the Tiramisu avenue.  Luckily I found this cake and thank god I did. It was purely delicious with the combining flavors of espresso, coffee, whipped cream, butter cake,  a touch of chocolate shavings for an extra kick and garnished with chocolate covered espresso beans for good measure.  This cake has a funny story behind it..wanna hear it? Good.  

This cake took me about 2  days to make. I made the layers on day one and made the filling and topping on day 2; as well as spending time on the presentation. When the cake was all finished I left it out on the counter to set the robust espresso and coffee flavors before wrapping it up.  I left the kitchen for a bit to finish up some laundry during this time, only to come out and see my dog, Boomer, with a face full of whipped cream. By full of whipped cream, I mean whipped cream in his ears, nose, all of his face and collar. Shockingly, Bentley, my other pooch, didn't get in on the action.  So, I was left with half eaten tiramisu cake with literally every drop of whipped cream licked off the top and sides. Boomer stunk like espresso for days! Although this is something I could laugh about now, at the time it wasn't so funny. I was out 1lb of mascarpone cheese, a container of heavy whipped cream, chocolate shavings, and espresso powder, among other ingredients. I ended up remaking the entire cake!  If I only had a camera at the time to display the look on my puppy's face!  He looked at me as if he did nothing wrong! Too bad Halloween wasn't last week because Boomer could have unmistakeably gone as a Tiramisu cake. Recipe below.

For the cake:
2 cups cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/4 sticks butter at room temp.
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt.
In a mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one a time, plus yolk, beating well after each addition. Reduce the mixer speed and alternatively add the flour mixture and the buttermilk. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. Pour into 2 greased 9 inch baking pans, and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

For the espresso syrup: mix together 1/2 cup water and 1/3 cup sugar in a saucepan and heat just to a boil. Remove from heat and add 1 Tb. coffee liqueur.

For the filling and frosting:
8 oz. mascarpone
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 Tb. coffee liqueur
1 cup cold heavy cream
2 1/2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

Cream together the mascarpone, sugar vanilla and liqueur in a large mixing bowl, until smooth.
In a separate bowl, whip the heavy cream to firm peaks. With a light touch, fold the cream into the mascarpone mixture.

To assemble the cake: Remove the crowns of the cakes to make them flat (sorry Sam), place one cake on a plate and soak the layer with the espresso syrup. Smooth some of the mascarpone cream over, gently press the chopped chocolate on top of it. Top it with the other cake, pour the remaining of the espresso syrup.

For the frosting, dissolve 1 tsp. espresso powder and 1 tsp hot water and add to the remaining mascarpone and spread over the side and top of the cake.
Decorate with dusted cocoa powder if wanted.