from Great Scoops
With Little Italy as our neighbour, we celebrate the annual Italian Week festival by turning our entire ice cream cabinet into one of Italian-inspired flavours. Our tiramisu incorporates all the essential elements of Italy’s most famous dessert – silky mascarpone cheese, strong espresso, cocoa powder, ladyfingers and a dash of a coffee liqueur – churned into a luscious ice cream dessert.
Makes about 1 quart
Ingredients
Ladyfingers:
¼ cup (59 mL) espresso
2 Tbsp (30 mL) coffee liqueur
6 ladyfingers
Tiramisu Ice Cream:
1 cup (236 g) mascarpone
1 cup (236 g) heavy cream
1 cup (236 g) whole milk
½ cup (100 g) sugar
2 Tbsp (30 mL) espresso
¼ tsp (1 mL) fine sea salt
5 large egg yolks (90 g)
2 Tbsp (50 mL) coffee liqueur
1 qty Ladyfingers
Dutch-processed cocoa powder, for dusting
Directions
Ladyfingers:
Combine espresso and coffee liqueur in a shallow dish. Dip ladyfingers for 2 seconds on each side before removing. Chop ladyfingers into ½-inch pieces and freeze in a single layer on a baking sheet.
Frozen ladyfinger pieces can be stored in an air-tight container in the freezer for up to 2 weeks. Makes about ½ cup.
Tiramisu Ice Cream:
Prepare an ice bath.
In a medium-sized saucepan, whisk mascarpone, cream, milk, sugar, espresso and salt. Stir over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, until steam begins to rise from the surface and mascarpone is incorporated. Remove from heat.
While the dairy is warming, whisk the egg yolks in a medium-sized bowl. To temper the yolks, slowly pour 1 cup of the heated cream mixture into the yolks while whisking vigorously. Continue adding heated cream and whisking until about half of the hot cream has been added. Transfer the yolk mixture to the pan.
Cook the mixture over medium heat, stirring continuously with a heatproofed spatula, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the spatula or a digital thermometer reads 180F (about 5-6 minutes). Immediately remove from heat and strain the custard through a fine-mesh sieve into the inner bowl of the prepared ice bath.
Stir in coffee liqueur. Cool the custard in the ice bath until room temperature, stirring occasionally. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, or overnight.
Place storage container in the freezer to chill. Freeze the mixture in an ice-cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions until ice cream is thick and creamy and has increased in volume by about a third.
Once churned, add in ladyfingers and churn for a further 30 seconds until incorporated.
Enjoy immediately or freeze 2 hours in chilled storage container for a firmer scoop. Serve each scoop with a dusting of cocoa.
Booze: When used in moderation, alcohol with its low freezing point, can help you achieve a quintessential parlour-style scoop. Even if you’re not looking for a booze-forward flavour, 1 tablespoon of a mildly flavoured alcohol can significantly help with scoopability. Adding more than 3 or 4 tablespoons of hard alcohol can make your ice cream too soft, or it can inhibit freezing all together – so be wary and follow the recipe. Alcohol should be added to the ice cream mixture only after the saucepan has been removed from the heat, otherwise it will cook off.
Nada’s Tips & Tricks: You can’t go wrong with this dessert with its cream, coffee and liqueur coming together for a perfect summer treat. You can also use the ice cream as the filling for a tiramisu cake (to be eaten right away – like that will be a problem!).
Contents and images from Great Scoops: Recipes from a Neighborhood Ice Cream Shop by Marlene Haley and Amelia Ryan of The Merry Dairy with Anne DesBrisay. Photographs by Christian Lalonde. Copyright 2022 by The Merry Dairy. Excerpted with permission from Figure 1 Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. https://www.figure1publishing.com/book/great-scoops/
