I happen to think that tiramisu is a great summertime dessert because it require any cooking and it is served cold. It is also great for entertaining because it can – and should -be made well in advance of when you want to serve it. The only drawback to a tiramisu as a summertime dessert is that it doesn’t make use of any of the luscious berries that are at their peak in the summer. You could say why not save the berries for another day? Today, however, I decided to simply incorporate berries into a tiramisu.
Strawberry Cheesecake Tiramisu is not a typical tiramisu. It does use coffee-dipped ladyfingers, but instead of a mascarpone cream, it uses a cream cheese-based cream to glue everything together. Since cream cheese is heavier than mascarpone, this makes the whole dessert a little bit more dense. That may sound like a bad thing, but in this case it serves to hold everything together and also makes the dessert taste a bit like strawberry cheesecake!
As a little experiment, I’ve posted a video of me making this dessert on YouTube so you all can see me prepare it. I tried to be brief, so the recipe below is actually a little bit more specific than the recipe as presented in the video. Still, it was fun to make and if you all like it, I’m planning to do some more (side note: I’ll be using a different camera in the future).
This dish tastes great, particularly after it has been in the fridge overnight and everything has really come together. I used berries from my local farmer’s market and they were super sweet, so the dessert didn’t need any added sweetened. If your berries aren’t, consider adding about a 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar to the cheesecake cream. Also, you’ll notice that I only dipped the ladyfingers in the coffee mixture for a second or two in the video. Mine were very absorbent, but if yours are drier, give them an extra couple of seconds to soak up the flavor, but be sure to get them out before they get too soft.
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