The Sultry, Six-Ingredient Side of Tiramisù
For the best version, we learned to ditch the cooking and dump most of the sugar.
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No liquor. No cooking. A shockingly minuscule amount of sugar. And maybe a side of prostitution? This clearly was not the tiramisù we know.
I was in Treviso, a canal-cut city in northeastern Italy where the dessert was born. And I quickly learned how easy it is to make a bad tiramisù. The good news is that it’s even easier to make an excellent one. The lesson? Simplicity is best.
I got my first lesson in tiramisù assembly—for truly, that best describes the process, as no cooking or baking occurs in the traditional making of this treat—from the folks at Camelia Bakery, which was voted to have the city’s best tiramisù. I could and probably should have simply stopped there. They earned that honor, and every sample I tried after disappointed.
That’s even more impressive when you realize Camelia Bakery—which looks a bit like an English tea shop—has been around only since 2015. Few question that tiramisù was created in Treviso, but how long ago is another matter.
Some say it’s a relatively modern creation, perhaps dating only to the middle of the last century. Others tell of a saucier origin dating to an 1800s brothel, where it was served as an aphrodisiac. For years after, it supposedly was eaten at home only on the down low, lest diners share in the shame of its scandalous past.
Whatever the truth, classic tiramisù should contain only six ingredients, Linda Maria Botter, daughter of the now-deceased owner of Camelia Bakery, Camelia Botter, told me—biscuits, coffee, sugar, mascarpone, egg yolks and cocoa powder. The magic is in selecting only the best of those ingredients and finding just the right ratios of each.
To show how it’s done, baker Camilla Conzera combined egg yolks and cane sugar in a stand mixer, emphasis on the eggs. In fact, three times as many eggs as sugar by volume. While many cooks opt to gently heat this mixture—known as zabaglione—traditional tiramisù never does, favoring the cleaner, richer and lighter taste of raw.
Once the eggs and sugar were whipped glossy, firm and boldly yellow, Conzera added massive amounts of mascarpone, probably three times the total volume of the eggs and sugar. She then whipped the mixture again, creating a light and airy cream-like treat that mounded in thick, shiny swirls in the mixer bowl.
Next, the biscuits. Conzera explained that only savoiardi biscuits—what we know as ladyfinger cookies—are acceptable. But unlike the spongy ones we sometimes see here, these are lightly crispy outside, almost glistening with a faint dusting of granulated sugar, and ever so slightly chewy at the center. And they always are snapped in half before use to allow them to better absorb the cooled espresso they get dunked in for just the briefest of seconds.
For assembly, I expected a trifle-like project, something layered in a bowl and large enough to feed a crowd. But in Treviso single servings—sometimes stacked on small plates, more often layered into small cups—are the norm.
Conzera scooped some of the filling into a piping bag, then began, squirting about ¼ cup of the mixture into the bottom of a cup. She then soaked two savoiardi halves for just a second or two in espresso, then set them into the filling. Over them, another ¼ cup of filling, followed by another four savoiardi halves, then a final layer of cream.
But hold off on the finishing sprinkle of cocoa powder. In classic tiramisù, Botter told me, the biscuits must be perfectly soft with no crunch. And that requires at least a 12-hour rest in the refrigerator before the tiramisù is ready to serve. Only then does it get an aggressive dusting of cocoa.
When I tasted one that had been properly rested, it honestly was a bit shocking. It was utterly rich and creamy, but not cloying thanks to the bare amount of sugar used. The pleasant bitterness of the cocoa powder perfectly balanced the indulgence of the mascarpone. And, as promised, the biscuits offered a deliciously spongy burst of coffee, but no crunch.
A few bites in and I understood how one might consider this an aphrodisiac, fact or fiction.
