Tiramisu Cupcakes

When DD and I first moved in to our new house, we had a few things that we needed to organise and it meant that we made a quite a few trips to the local Bunnings. One day, we decided to mix it up and go to a different Bunnings and we found a lovely little fresh food store and deli. They had a great selection of gourmet lines and I bought some savoiardi biscuits and mascarpone.

Once we had returned home (and put the cupboard together), I was browsing through blogs and I came across these Tiramisu Cupcakes from Amicus Cupcake. I was intrigued and I had to try them.

They were very different from the usual cupcake, they were light and airy from the whisked egg whites. These were the first things I baked in the oven in our new house. I'm not a big fan of the oven, but these seemed to have turned out okay.

After baking the cupcakes, icing sugar, espresso coffee, cocoa and water is combined to make a thick mocha syrup which is drizzled over the cakes. Finally, they are iced with a mascarpone frosting - mascarpone, icing sugar, marsala and cream.

I loved the airy cake and the mascarpone cream, but I didn't really like the coffee syrup. I'm not a big coffee drinker and I am very fussy about bitter-tasting coffee. This tasted bitter, and in hindsight I probably could have increased the icing sugar to sweeten it, but I didn't taste it early enough. DD liked them lots and he was quite put out when I disposed of the excess cupcakes.

Please see Amicus Cupcake for the recipe for Tiramisu Cupcakes.

I made a traditional tiramisu after the cupcakes, because I did still have to use my savoiardi biscuits. I amended my go-to recipe (from Food Safari) to use the mascarpone cream from the tiramisu cupcake recipe because the mascarpone cream is awesome. I did have to buy some more mascarpone to complete the tiramisu and learned a lesson in quality. I bought a cheaper brand from a mainstream supermarket and it tasted bad - so different to what I had purchased from the deli. The creaminess and flavour were completely missing and it had a slightly iffy taste about it. This time I did add more icing sugar, but it still didn't disguise the difference. Next time I'll spend the extra dollar or two and get the good quality brand.