Strawberry tiramisu for a summer birthday

It’s that time of the year again, when Jan celebrates his 18th birthday! This year it was really warm the days before, so neither of us felt like me turning on the oven to bake something. Luckily the supermarket publicity came to the rescue with a nice summery recipe that required no oven! It did require some stove top time, but not too much. And so, the strawberry tiramisu became this year’s birthday dessert.

Strawberry Tiramisu

Strawberry Tiramisu

Ingredients

  • For the coulis:
    • 250 gr strawberries
    • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • For the cream:
    • 4 eggs
    • 50 gr powder sugar
    • 500 gr mascarpone
  • For assembly:
    • 300 gr ladyfingers (the cookies)
    • 500 gr strawberries, clean, hulled & sliced

Instructions:

  1. Make the strawberry coulis: clean, hull and quarter strawberries. Place in a sauce pan with lemon juice, heat gently for 10-15 minutes, until the fruit collapses. Using an immersion blender, puree the strawberries. Sieve the sauce using a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds. Add enough water to obtain 250-300 ml of sauce.
  2. Make the filling: separate egg yolks from whites. First, whip up whites until firm peaks form (or if you’re so inclined, they hold when you upturn the bowl above your head!). Then (don’t bother cleaning the whisk) mix the egg yolks with the sugar until white and volume is two-three times the original. Finally mix the mascarpone on its own (to soften) before adding the egg yolks and mixing thoroughly with whisk. Switch to a rubber spatula to softly fold in the egg whites in three times.
  3. Assemble the dessert: dip lightly the ladyfingers in the strawberry coulis and arrange one layer on the bottom of a serving dish. Spread with half of the mascarpone mix, then place half of the sliced strawberries on top. Place another layer of dipped cookies, then mascarpone and finish with strawberries.
  4. Chill in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight before serving.

Makes: 6 servings according to the original recipe, but make that more like 12-14 servings.