I'm not a huge fan of tirimasu as coffee flavour in desert isn't something I enjoy. But I saw a recipe for lemon tirimasu and, well, let's say, I was all in on trying that!
The recipe I used is somewhere between the easiest and most complicated, the results were very tasty!
The ingredients are:
The biscuit element are Laydfinger, savoiardi, or boudoir, biscuits. There are recipes for making them online, but I purchased a pack from the supermarket.
These are dipped in liquid which contains alcohol. To make my mine I boiled juiced and zested lemons with sugar and water. When cooled the mixture was put in the blender and whiizzed up for a minute or so. To this I added some limoncello and lemon vodka
The lemon vodka was delicious on its own, direct from the freezer.
After a brief dip a layer of the bisucits were laid in the serving bowl, then a layer of the mix (recipe to come) a second layer of biscuit, a second layer of mix, then topped off with lemon curd.
I had intended to buy lemon curd, but the local supermarket was out so I had to make it, which was surprisingly easy.
In the picture above you can see the pan with the lemons boiling up at the back, in the foreground I am shisking the lemon curd. To make that the ingredients are:
Zest & juice of 4 lemons;
4 eggs;
200gms - 1 & 1/3 cups of sugar caster sugar;
100gms - 2/3 cup butter.
I also added a couple of drops of Sicilian Lemon extract.
You can see that I have a pan resting on a pan in the picture. THe one below has water in it. You don't want to cook this over direct heat, so a bain marie is the way to go. I had to improvise as I don't have one.
Step one is mixing the zest, juice, sugar, and butter in the bowl and stir occaisonally until the butter has melted. Then the eggs get added and, importantly, from here on you must keep stirring or whisking. If you don't the eggs will start to scramble which makes for an unpleasant curd! If using a suacepan like I was it is important to use a spoon or spatula to bring the mix from the edges of the pan in so that you don't get part scrambled curds.
After about ten minutes the curds should be smooth and have thickened like a custard.
At this point passing through a seive will allow the zest to be removed, but I used very fine grate and was happy to leave the zest in.
When the curd had cooled I transferred it to a tub and put it in the fridge overnight.
Now, lastly, for the mix to go in the tirimasu.
For each layer I used:
250gms - 1 & 2/3rd cup mascarpone (not low fat or light);
1 teaspoon cornflour;
1 tablespoon icing sugar;
1 egg;
few drops Sicilian Lemon extract
half teaspoon vanilla extract;
quarter cup double (heavy) cream;
2 tablespoon lemon curd.
Put all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat together until you have a nice smooth consistency. A food mixer makes this very easy, though do it on a slow setting so that the mix is not overworked.
Some folks may balk at the idea of raw egg in the recipe. If you live in a country with poor health standards, or are pregnant, then leaving the egg out and adding more cornflour will work. I don't have measures for this, but you can probably find one easily.
