No-Bake Tiramisu Cake in a 20x20 Dish

Step-by-step recipe

1. Before you start on this exquisite tiramisu cake, brew a large cup of strong black coffee from beans. The coffee needs to cool while you make the creams. The eggs, as I said, must be absolutely fresh. People often use a special heat treatment for the eggs in the cream to rule out any risk. Mascarpone and savoiardi ladyfingers can be bought at the store.
   
2. You'll need a stand mixer with whisk attachments. Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Put the yolks in the mixer bowl, add 1 cup of powdered sugar and liquid vanilla to taste. Beat the yolks until they form a thick mass that doesn't flow at all and clings firmly to the beaters. Add all the mascarpone and slowly mix until smooth. The egg mixture looks like a cream. And, by the way, it's delicious on its own. Put the egg cream in the fridge for now.
   
3. Put the egg whites into the mixer bowl and add a pinch of salt. Set the bowl in ice or very cold water. Whip the whites, gradually adding powdered sugar, up to 3 tbsp, until they form a stiff foam that doesn't slide out of the bowl even when you turn it over. The egg white mixture is snow-white and quite sweet.
   
4. The next step: using a spatula, very gently fold the egg white mixture into the yolk cream so they combine evenly into a completely smooth mass. You can do this with a mixer on the lowest speed. But for some reason, people often complain that the cream separates when mixed. Better not to risk it: with a spatula it'll turn out well and nothing should go wrong. The finished cream should be cold.
   
5. It's best to assemble tiramisu cake in a glass dish or baking pan. When my daughter and I made this dessert, we chose a heatproof glass dish with inside dimensions of 20 by 20 cm and high sides. That let us use 10 cm ladyfingers without breaking them. If your dish is a different size, you'll have to break some of the ladyfingers into pieces.
   
6. Pour the cooled black coffee into a deep bowl and add 100 ml of coffee liqueur and 100 ml of cooled boiled water. Stir: this is the soaking liquid for the ladyfingers. By the way, the porous ladyfingers soak up liquid like a sponge and go soggy instantly. So dip each one quickly, in a single motion, and immediately place it on the cream. Spread a 1-1.5 cm layer of cream over the bottom of the dish.
   
7. Quickly dipping each ladyfinger into the coffee and liqueur mixture, immediately lay it on the layer of cream in the dish, snugly, side by side. Fill the whole dish this way. We ended up with 16 ladyfingers per layer. You can lay them all in one direction or in blocks at right angles to each other.
   
8. Divide the egg and mascarpone cream in half. Spread one half over the layer of coffee-soaked savoiardi and smooth it carefully from edge to edge. Add a second layer of ladyfingers the same way as the first. Cover it with all the remaining cream. Smooth the surface of the cream and make it flat; a soft silicone spatula is very handy for this.
   
9. Tiramisu, whether as a dessert or a cake, is always easy to recognize by the velvety layer of cocoa powder on top. Grated chocolate is often used. But it's hard to get such a beautiful top with it. Dark cocoa powder is easy to spread with a tea strainer. Just put cocoa into the strainer. Then, shaking and tapping it, dust the cocoa in an even layer over the cream. The layer should be uniform, with no gaps.
   
10. Put the dish with the cake in the fridge. This takes a while; don't rush. It's best to make the dessert the day before, so it soaks and chills for 12 hours or more. Naturally, the cocoa layer will get a little damp while it soaks, and darker patches will appear. Just dust them with a little more cocoa. Before serving, carefully cut the cake into portions with a sharp knife and serve it in the dish it was assembled in.
    
11. Transfer the pieces of cake to dessert plates with a spatula. If you like, dust the plate with 1-2 pinches of cocoa. The dessert is wonderfully delicious and a feast for the eyes. It's a true pleasure. No wonder its name, tira mi sù, roughly translates as “lift me up,” pull me upward. If you like, you can make the dessert in individual portions, layering the ingredients in separate glasses. Or, as large restaurants and cafés often do, paper dividers are inserted into the dish and the layers are built directly inside them. Also, sponge cake layers like those for an ordinary cake are often used instead of savoiardi; you get a cake with cream, and I don't like that.
    
12. The cake is fairly rich; that's what a dessert is for. You don't eat much of it. As a rule, it's either a sweet treat on its own or an elegant accompaniment to coffee. Besides, women love it. Recipes that stray from the classic may use whipped cream, chocolate, sponge cake and nuts. Often the soaking liquid contains no liqueur, so you can treat children. Although very often, to boost the flavor and make the dessert even more delicate, cream liqueur like Baileys is used instead of coffee liqueur.