First off, I got my mise en place together, and like most baking recipes, it was more measuring than any other prep work so it went fairly quickly. Ladyfingers, coffee, sugar, mascarpone, vanilla beans, sweet sherry, an orange (for the zest and the juice) and some 70% dark chocolate, and I was ready to go!
I got myself an 8-inch square dish and layered my ladyfingers in an orderly fashion. The recipe called for 15 biscuits...and there were 20 in my package, so I just used them all to complete my second layer.
Once I had my ladyfingers in place, I poured my freshly brewed cup of coffee (sweetened with some of the sugar) over them. Immediately, the cookies started to soak up the coffee.
While I left them to get all soggy and delicious, I put my mascarpone in a bowl with the rest of the sugar and whipped it up.
Once that was nicely blended, I split the two vanilla beans by scoring them the long way and used a small coffee spoon to scrape all the seeds out of each pod.
I added the seeds to the bowl of whipped mascarpone and continued to whisk. The vanilla seeds separated into tiny little black specks when I whisked it. Look at all the little vanilla seeds!
I then whisked in the 1/2 cup of sweet sherry and the mascarpone mixture was finished. Once the sherry has been blended, the mixture should have a loose, shiny consistency. If for some reason you should need to loosen the mixture a bit more before you pour it on your ladyfingers, you can use some of the orange juice to do so. Then the squeeze the rest of the orange juice over the ladyfingers and spread the whipped mascarpone mixture evenly on top.
Once you've got that all spread out evenly, sprinkle shaved chocolate over the entire surface, along with some orange zest, and VOILA...TIRAMISU!
Doesn't that look mouth-watering? It's going to be very difficult to keep that in the fridge until after dinner. Wish me luck! :)
