Ingredient

Tiramisu

Tiramisu is coffee-soaked sponge fingers layered with a mascarpone cream. It needs no cooking and very little skill, and it fails in two places: biscuits dipped for too long, which makes it a soup, and over-beaten mascarpone, which makes it grainy.

The dip is about one second

Savoiardi — Italian sponge fingers — are dry, crisp and extremely absorbent. Left in coffee they go from crisp to saturated to disintegrating within a few seconds.

The dip is one second a side, if that. In and out. The biscuit should still feel firm in the middle when you lay it down; it will continue absorbing moisture from the cream and from the coffee it already took up, and by the time the tiramisu has chilled overnight it will be perfectly soft all the way through.

A biscuit that feels correctly soaked in your hand is already too wet, and the finished dessert will be a pool.

Use proper dry savoiardi rather than soft sponge fingers or trifle sponges, which are already moist and cannot take any liquid at all.

The method

1. Make strong coffee — espresso or a strong moka pot — and let it cool completely. Warm coffee melts the cream. Add a splash of Marsala, rum or coffee liqueur if you want it.
2. Separate the eggs. Beat the yolks with sugar until pale and thick. For a cooked version, do this over a pan of barely simmering water until it thickens into a zabaglione, which is more stable and avoids raw egg.
3. Let the yolk mixture cool if you cooked it.
4. Loosen the mascarpone by hand with a spatula first, then fold it into the yolk mixture gently. Do not whisk it hard — mascarpone splits and goes grainy very easily.
5. Whip the egg whites to soft peaks, or whip cream instead if you would rather avoid raw white, and fold that in with a light hand.
6. Dip each savoiardo in the coffee for about a second a side and lay it in the dish.
7. Spread half the cream over, then another layer of dipped biscuits, then the rest of the cream. Level it.
8. Cover and refrigerate for at least six hours and ideally overnight. This is not optional — it is when the biscuits soften and the layers set.
9. Dust generously with cocoa immediately before serving, not before chilling, or the cocoa absorbs moisture and goes patchy.

The decisions

Raw egg

Traditional tiramisu contains raw yolk and often raw white. Cooking the yolks into a zabaglione over a bain-marie avoids that and gives a more stable cream. Whether raw egg is appropriate depends on who is eating it — the Food Standards Agency is the authority on that rather than a recipe.

Egg white or cream

Whites give the lighter, more traditional texture. Whipped cream is more stable, holds better and is the safer bet for making ahead.

Alcohol

Marsala is classic. Rum, brandy, Tia Maria and amaretto all work. It is genuinely optional.

Coffee

Strong and cold. Weak coffee gives a bland, sweet dessert with nothing to balance the mascarpone.

Cocoa

Unsweetened, dusted at the last minute. Its bitterness is structural, not decorative.

The dish

Wide and shallow rather than deep, so the ratio of biscuit to cream stays right and it sets through.

What goes wrong

• Soup. The biscuits were dipped too long. One second a side.
• Grainy cream. The mascarpone was over-beaten or was too cold. Bring it to cool room temperature, loosen by hand, fold gently.
• Runny, will not hold a slice. Not chilled long enough, or the base was under-whipped. Overnight is the answer to most of it.
• Bland. Weak coffee, and not enough cocoa. Both are there to balance a very rich cream.
• Patchy cocoa. Dusted before chilling, so it absorbed moisture. Dust at the table.
• Split cream after adding the whites. Folded too vigorously, or the mixtures were at very different temperatures.

Common questions