Easier Tiramisu Recipe Made With Cream Cheese

Here’s a recipe for Tiramisu I made, using ingredients that I we bought Buy 1 Take 1 / on sale / discounted, and easy to measure ingredients, adapted from The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer.

These were so good I actually thought they were better than those bought from professional bakers!

We bought these Matilde Vicenzi Italian ladyfingers from S&R, they were discounted by P50.00 (originally P179.95, now only P129.95). Each package has 4 smaller packs inside (the transparent plastic ones).

The thing I like about these ladyfingers is that they are sturdy and don’t crumble quickly when dunked into coffee, and I didn’t need to bake them again to make them drier (original recipe has a step where the lady fingers need to be baked until crisp). I am eating the leftover lady fingers right now with coffee . The lady fingers are really delicious dunked in coffee 🙂

Here are the ingredients:

5 egg yolks (I used the S&R Brown Eggs we got on Buy 2 Take 1. The yolks are really very orange!)

1/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup water (original recipe called for Marsala, which I didn’t have on hand)

2 packages of cream cheese, 8oz each (we bought them Buy 1 Take 1 from Robinson’s Otis a few weeks ago; original recipe called for mascarpone cheese, but I don’t have mascarpone, and I wanted to use our Buy 1 Take 1 cream cheese)

1/2 cup of cream (I used Nestle all purpose cream, refrigerated; no need to measure accurately, just use half of the box since 1 250ml box = roughly 1 cup)

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 – 1/2 cup extra strong coffee (original recipe called for only 1 cup, but it wasn’t enough)

Chivas Regal 12 y.o.  (original recipe called for 2-3 tablespoons or rum or brandy, but I used around 1/4 cup of Chivas Regal instead because I like it very alcoholic; also, we ran out of rum/brandy and Chivas Regal was what we had; you can use whatever alcoholic drink you like)

3 tablespoons sugar

lady fingers, enough for several layers

chocolate for grating / cocoa powder

I used The Joy of Cooking’s recipe as a guide. If you are serious about food and cooking, The Joy of Cooking is a classic cookbook. I bought mine a while back. It was a splurge for me at the time because the book is rather expensive, but it is worth it because the recipes are really good and it covers almost everything. It’s one of those cookbooks that are close to being considered as one of the cooking bibles. I’m still referring to it now, more than a decade later.

Steps:

1. Refrigerate the box of all purpose cream.
2. Take the cream cheese out of the refrigerator, open them and put them in a mixing bowl. Set aside so it comes to room temperature (makes it easier to blend).
3. Prepare your container/s for the finished tiramisu (just clean it). I used a 9 x 13 baking dish.
4. Get a pot, put some water into the pot, around 1 inch. Make sure your metal mixing bowl can be rested on top of the pot without the mixing bowl falling off. This is because we will be using this set up as a double boiler.
5. Separate eggs to get 5 egg yolks, and place them in the metal mixing bowl. In my experience, refrigerated eggs are easier to separate. Add the 1/3 cup white sugar. Mix, preferably with a wire whisk, until the sugar is mixed and the egg yolks become lighter in color. Add the 1/3 cup water and mix well.
6. Let’s slightly cook the eggs – Start simmering the 1-inch water in the pot, place the metal bowl with the beaten eggs on top of the pot and mix gently. Make sure the bottom of the mixing bowl is not touching the water inside the pot. This is called double-boiling. The purpose is to slightly cook the egg yolks with gentle heat. Direct heat from the stove will be too strong and will cook the eggs too much. We want to raise the temperature of the eggs to kill nasty things (like salmonella), but we still want the eggs to be liquid-y. Keep gently stirring until the eggs become slightly thicker, but do not let the eggs solidify. It will smell egg-y. Turn off the heat, remove the bowl from the pot and let the eggs cool.
7. While the eggs are cooling, start working on the cream cheese. With an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese until soft. Add half the box of refrigerated all purpose cream and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. Continue to beat until well-blended, increase mixer speed and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.
8. Add the egg mixture to the cream cheese mixture and blend well.
9. Prepare the coffee dip. Add the rum/brandy/scotch + 2-3 tablespoons sugar to the coffee, mix well. Pour some into a container that will fit the lady finger.
10. To assemble: Get a lady finger, dip it into the coffee mixture, quickly turn over the lady finger to dip the other side, arrange it on your dish. Continue until you have completed the bottom layer of the tiramisu. Spread some of the cream cheese mixture on top of the lady finger layer. Grate chocolate on top. At first, I thought of using an ordinary Hershey’s bar, but I found this Buy 1 Take 1 Frey Dark Lemon and Pepper (P119 for 2 bars) chocolate in the fridge and decided to use that instead. It added a very nice hint of lemon and a little kick from the black pepper. It added a whole new dimension of flavor to the tiramisu! Add another layer of coffee-dipped lady fingers, then the cream cheese mixture, grate chocolate on top. Continue until you’re done.
11. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours before serving.

If there is one thing I could have improved, it was making sure each lady finger absorbed more coffee. I only prepared 1 cup and I was worried that I would run out. That’s why in the recipe above, I increased the amount of coffee to 1 1/2 cups.

If you try to make tiramisu, please let us know how you did!