Welcome summer! Tiramisù popsicle recipe

To celebrate the coming of summer, we'll bring you a popsicle based on a very classical italian sweet: the World renown Tiramisù.

The Tiramisù is a very simple sweet dish, but it's not a classic in the sense of "old", it's a rather "new classic", since it was invented in...1962! I mean, come on! That's the day before yesterday! ;) How could people live without this marvel?

The original recipe was an idea of Mrs. Alba Campeol, in the beautiful city of Treviso, very near to Venice. She affirms that the idea came out after giving birth to her first son, when her mother and her mother-in-law used to bring her coffee and ladyfingers and tell her: "eat them all, that'll be good for you!". In Italian we say "tirare su" (rise up, come on!) when someone needs to get better, and starting with this idea, she decided together with the cook of the restaurant they owned to add some nourishing eggs with sugar and the mascarpone cheese.

Even though many (or everybody) thinks that Tiramisù has some liquor in it, it actually hasn't. Or shouldn't have, according Mrs. Campeol's original recipe, since it was precisely designed to be fit for everyone, from the childhood to the oldest one, and specially for those who needed to "tirarsi su", to recover themselves, making the liquor unfit for the recipe. The many tourist that visited the enchanting city of Treviso (we would advice you to do so!) were blown away from the simple and genial recipe, making it Worldwide famous, and this lead to the many versions of this sweet that we have nowadays.

Here you are an interview to Mrs. Campeol (in Italian) where she tells us the history and she also regrets not having patented her recipe in the Sixties! We're thankful and grateful anyway, Mrs. Campeol!

 
Ingredients:

• 4 egg yolks
• 2 egg whites
• 100 g. of sugar
• 400 g. of mascarpone cheese
• 3 or 4 Savoiardi biscuits or ladyfingers
• cocoa powder
• a cup of coffee
• a pinch of salt

Preparation:

1- Beat the egg yolks until they get foamy with an electric blender. You're looking for a pale white colour.

2- Add to the previous mix the mascarpone cheese and mix it togheter.
 
3- Beat the eggs white until they become foamy and we add this to the previous mix with round movements, from bottom to top in order to let the foam stand up straight.

4- We dip the Savoiardi or the ladyfingers in the coffee (it can be decaffeinated, instant coffee or espresso, you choose).

5- We put our mix in our popsicle or ice cream moulds, alternating with coffee-wet ladyfingers and cocoa powder and our mix again, as many times as we want, until the mould is filled and we end with some cocoa powder, then we put our wooden stick. We can also decide to put the ladyfingers at the center of the mould and the mix around them. This time I decided to do it with some little pieces of ladyfingers, that's a matter of tastes!

6- Put it into the freezer, if it's possible from a day to another, since it's a very creamy mix and it needs a lot of cold.

This time I've made it as a popsicle, but you can do it in a plum cake mould too.
Before pouring the mix, I cover the bottom with a plastic wrap, in order to avoid that our Tiramisù does not sticks to the bottom and can be removed easily. This version is to be made just like the popsicles, but with some more savoiardi biscuits and forming and alternate structure, just like the traditional Tiramisù: biscuits, mascarpone mix, cocoa powder and others biscuits, in that orden. This is what is called a "semifreddo", a sweet between a gelato and a traditional cake.

Happy start of Summer to everyone! Enjoy this ice creamy version of the Tiramisù!

Greetings,

AnGie