TWD: Tiramisu Cake!

This week’s TWD was chosen by Megan of My Baking Adventures: tiramisu cake! My experience with tiramisu is fairly limited. I’ve had it once or twice but, to be honest, I haven’t really enjoyed it. So, I knew this week would be interesting. I was curious whether I’d like Dorie’s recipe…the ingredient list didn’t scare me so I held out hope!

Speaking of Dorie’s recipe, it’s really quite simple. There are quite a few steps (and it took me FOREVER to put this cake together for some reason) but each step is super easy. Dorie uses a yellow cake as the base for the tiramisu instead of ladyfingers. Both layers of the cake are soaked with an espresso syrup and a mascarpone/whipped cream mixture is used for filling and frosting the cake. There are also pieces of chocolate in between the layers, which I thought added some textural contrast to the soft cake and frosting.

One thing is for sure this week. My cake won’t be winning any beauty contests! I was racing against the clock to get some pictures taken before it got dark so I didn’t have much time to decorate. I decided to “dust” the cake with cocoa powder and I think it ended up looking really messy. Oh well, in the end what matters is how it tastes and I’m really excited to say that I liked this tiramisu!! The yellow cake was amazing and I couldn’t stop eating the mascarpone/whipped cream mixture as I frosted the cake. I’m not knowledgeable enough about tiramisu to know how Dorie’s recipe differs from others I have tried in the past, but I know I’ll come back to this recipe again if I ever need to make tiramisu!

Many thanks for Megan for helping me find a tiramisu I actually like! Pick up a copy of Dorie’s book to find the recipe or head over to Megan’s site to give it a shot. You can also check out the other (much prettier!) tiramisu cakes over at the TWD site.