Flavor #44 - Tiramisu Ice Cream

Twenty years ago here in the US, Tiramisu became the big date night desert order. It seemed to come on so quickly that Tom Hanks joked about it in Sleepless in Seattle, not knowing what it was and wondering if some woman would want him to do it to her. Thankfully, we never had to see that, although I am sure that Rosie O'Donnell was doing more than her share of Tiramisu from the craft service table!

I checked out a few different recipes for this and have combined some of the better aspects for my own. Sadly, adding bits of sponge cake to this does not work as well as adding baked goods to other flavors, as the sponge cake does what a sponge does, making the cake a real mess. So I will continue to work on that aspect of this flavor. This is also, by far, the most expensive recipe I have come across as the cost of the Mascarpone Cheese alone was close to $12 and if you do not have any of the liquor on hand, there is another added expense.

 16oz of Mascarpone Cheese

1/2 Cup Heavy Cream

1/2 Cup Milk 

1 Cup Sugar

1/4 Cup of Kahlua

3 Tablespoons of Dark Rum

1 Teaspoon of Espresso Powder

1 Pinch of Salt

1/4 Cup of Mocha Fudge

Start by making the mocha fudge sauce as it needs to cool before adding it to the mix. I always have some homemade fudge sauce on hand. To turn it into mocha, heat about 1/3 of a cup of the fudge sauce into a sauce pan while adding three teaspoons of Espresso Powder, stirring as you go until the powder blends.  While the sauce cools, toss all of the other ingredients in a blender and liquify until the sugar is no longer making that grinding noise.  When the mix comes out of the ice cream machine, try to divide the batch into three part so you can layer the first two with the mocha fudge sauce while topping it off with the last of the Tiramisu mix.

The alcohol and the cheese will make this a rather soft ice cream. If you want a harder freeze or do not want the alcohol in there at all you can take out either the Kahlua or the Rum or both, and substitute with more Espresso Powder. Although I like a harder ice cream, the alcohol does make this flavor very authentic. All my memories of Tiramisu and other Italian style cakes always have that strong rum based flavor as does this ice cream. You can also make this a little harder by lowering the cheese content and adding more milk and cream.

This may not have the same impact Tiramisu had back in the 90's, but it is still pretty damn good!

Enjoy!