Tiramisu

This is something I've never made before.  My friend Jen's birthday was this week, and she loves tiramisu, so I offered to make it for her as a birthday cake.  The recipe I used is from Food Network, and it's by Ina Garten.  It can be found here.  This required some special ingredients...like Marscarpone cheese.

This was expensive!  However, how often does one make tiramisu?  It wasn't so prohibitively expensive that I wasn't willing to purchase, but if you wanted to use a substitute, whipped cream cheese was suggested to me by a friend.  She said that mixing it with some marscarpone you'd get the same flavor but your purchase would go much further.

Another ingredient...Rum.  This is Cockspur rum, and it's delicious.  I didn't want to mess around with this recipe, and that included not using a cheap crappy rum.  In my experience it's not good to cut corners by using bad alcohol.  If you won't drink it, don't cook with it!

The recipe used 6 egg yolks, and I had to beat it with 1/4 cup of sugar.  After it turned light yellow I added 1/2 cup of liquid: 1/4 cup espresso, 1/4 cup rum.  This made the mixture frothy and runny.  Next I added the cheese, hoping this would make the mixture stiffer...

Not so much.  This worried me.  This should be thick, and creamy and awesome.  Why was it runny?  No matter, I'd let it sit for a bit as I soak the lady fingers in the last of the coffee and rum and put them in the baking dish.

Once lined up I poured some of the marscarpone mix on top, and it was still runny.

Well, next layer then.  And then more cheese.

It thickened up some more.  Only thing let to do is stick in the fridge and let it set, see what happens...

Looks pretty good!