Pull me up with a Tiramisu (two recipes)

Tiramisu is an Italian dessert made from ladyfingers that have been lightly soaked in espresso coffee, layered by a cream made from whipped egg yolks, sugar, and mascarpone cheese.

The last layer is topped with cocoa powder or grated chocolate.

Tiramisu used to be one of my favourite desserts and although I used to make it often in the past, after the bird flu, I stopped making it because of the raw eggs used in this dessert. 

While in Rome, we were offered tiramisu a couple of times, as part of the menu and remembered what a great dessert it is and what we were missing all this time! 🙂

The phrase tirami su literally means "pick me up" or "pull me up" in reference to the effects of the sugar and espresso. It is also thought to mean "pick me up to heaven" due to the delightful taste.

During our trip to Rome, we exchanged some gifts with Natalia.

Natalia was not only kind enough to show us around but also gave us some gifts to try some of the Italian products.

Extra virgin olive oil from Sicily, Italian wine cookies, delicious chocolates and a package of freshly ground espresso coffee. 

The cookies were delicious, the chocolates disappeared in no time and I have left the olive oil to try it raw in salads.

Espresso vs other Coffee

The traditional coffee used for making a tiramisu is the Italian espresso coffee.  However, you can get good results using any other type of strong coffee.   

Espresso coffee is very similar to Greek coffee as the beans used are the same. 

However, they differ in taste because of the level of roasting the beans, the grinding of the coffee and of course the way of preparation.  

Unfortunately I do not have an espresso machine, so I have been making the espresso coffee just like we make the Greek coffee and then I filter it with a coffee filter. 

It smells heavenly and of course it tastes hundred times better than the ones we drink in cafeterias. 

I have even combined the two coffees together and in the picture you can see that the espesso coffee is much darker because of the roasting.

See how to make Greek coffee .

Since I wanted to use some of this espresso the first thing that came to my mind was to make (what else?)  Tiramisu!!

Alcohol Options

Tiramisu is not a dessert for children and although my daughter is 17 ½ years old she doesn't drink coffee and of course she doesn't drink alcohol.   

I used dark rum, which I mixed in the coffee.  However, if you don't drink or like alcohol, you can omit it entirely or if you don't like hard alcohol, you can just add any kind of mild liqueur (not liquor).

Assembling the dessert

Instead of making a big container using both packages (48) of biscuits, I used a smaller one using 36 biscuits and ⅔ of the cream.

With the remaining 12 biscuits and one third of the cream, I made a mini chocolate tiramisu, just for her without the coffee and booze.  

Instead of using coffee and rum, I melted some chocolate in the microwave for 1 minute and added some milk until it was quite liquid, in which I wet the biscuits.  

The remaining procedure was the same.

Updated: February 2019: 

The above Tiramisu was made many years ago, before the bird flu.

This time, however, I made it with pasteurized egg yolks and added whipped cream to substitute the egg whites.   

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Kopiaste and Kali Orexi!