Tiramisu

It was my mom's birthday last Sunday and I decided to make a Tiramisu cake for her. Previous occassions, I usually make tiramisu in a dessert cup for ease of consumption and portablity. After examining a few recipes, I decided on forming my own hybrid recipe, taking what I like from one recipe and combining it with something else that I like from another recipe. The ingredients are quite similar for all recipes, basically, there is a mascarephone cheese with whipping cream, a sponge layer which could be in a form of a cake or sponge fingers, chocolate shavings and coffee syrup with coffee liqueur and top it off with cocoa powder.

Initially, I wanted to put sponge fingers at the side of the cake, but in the end, decided to try my hands on working out some chocolate artwork for the sides and the top. I got the flower inspiration from a gelato shop that I visited some weeks back. The chocolate for the side was not easy to make and if you noticed hard enough, some of it actually cracked up when i tried to put it onto the sides.

I am still not able to understand why it is more difficult to work with white chocolate as compared to dark chocolates. It is not only difficult to melt it as too hot a temperature would burn the white chocolate while too low a temperature, the chocolate doesn't seem to melt a all. I suspect it may be due to my lack of skills in tempering chocolates or could it be due to the quality fo the white chocolate that I purchased. It hardens quickly and my attempts to melt it again usually gets it burnt.

As for the sponge cake, it needs more coffee syrup. As I was afraid that the sponge cake would be soaked till too extreme, ie coffee syrup starts dripping out with every cut , I was careful not to put too much coffee syrup, resulting in only 1/2 of the sponge cake was soaked with coffee. It would be better if all the layers of sponge was soaked completely.

I got feedback from my sister-in-law that the tiramisu this round was better than the last but she said it tasted different from those sold outside but she was not able to tell me what the difference was. Which bakery's tiramisu should I taste?

For the recipe, please click on this link
http://auntyyochana.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html