Recently the nice chaps at PerkULatte sent me a sample of
their ‘El Salvador’ coffee, and as soon as I made myself a cup, I thought the
hints of caramel and chocolate would make it perfect for tiramisu. I do love a
good tiramisu, but I sometimes find it a bit overpowering with the coffee and the booze, so in this version, I’ve
replaced the brandy with a bit of smooth, velvety salted caramel sauce. Though
I do say so myself, the caramel richness is the perfect thing to balance the
deep dark flavour of the coffee, and the creamy mascarpone.
Ingredients
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp caster sugar
60g mascarpone cheese
80g double cream
10 sponge fingers
60ml coffee
Dark chocolate, to grate on top
To make the salted
caramel sauce:
35g unsalted butter
25g light brown sugar
25g caster sugar
25g golden syrup
100ml double cream
1 tsp coarse sea salt
This recipe makes
two individual tiramisus, which look rather pretty in glass tumblers, but you
could easily multiply up to make a larger version to share.
Start by making the salted caramel sauce. Measure out the
butter, sugars and golden syrup into a small pan and place on a medium heat.
Use a wooden spoon to bring the ingredients together as the butter melts, but
once it’s nearly melted, stop using the spoon and just swirl the liquid gently
by moving the pan. This is really important, to stop your sauce crystallizing.
Let the sauce simmer for a few minutes, regularly swirling the pan, then add
the cream and swirl again. Finally, remove the pan from the heat and add the
salt.
Leave the sauce on one side for a moment while you
prepare the mascarpone cream. First, whisk the egg yolk and the caster sugar
together until the mixture is very pale yellow and nicely fluffy, then add the
mascarpone and whisk again. In a separate bowl, whip the cream until soft peaks
form, and then mix through the mascarpone mixture.
Now you can start to assemble your tiramisu. Spoon a
layer of cream into the bottoms of the glasses, and pop in the fridge for ten
minutes, to let it set.
Once the cream has more or less set, dip the sponge fingers
into the coffee and lay on top. Crumble a couple of the fingers and sprinkle
over to fill in the gaps, and drizzle with the remaining coffee. Pour the
caramel sauce over the top and then finish off with a final layer of the cream.
Grate a little dark chocolate over each and place in the fridge to set, for at
least 20 minutes.
PS I hadn't noticed until I came to upload this that I've done two salted caramel recipes in a row. This looks a bit shoddy but, dear reader, I must confess that I made the caramels a while ago and had only just gotten round to uploading them. The tiramisu was a recent invention and it was so good I didn't want to hold it back. So you'll just have to deal with it - frankly, if you don't appreciate salted caramel things, then I'm not sure what's wrong with you.
