White Christmas. Since the snow forecast last week fizzled, this turns out to be the first dusting of the season. And as usual after a lousy evening run, my morning run was excellent. Wore my Umass cap and purple shoes and felt awesome. I am running for running, and stretching as meditation and my body clearly feels better for it. Ready to set some good goals, like a run to Walden Pond in February and a marathon (some random marathon) in April. Want to give this another month before going all official or anything. Meanwhile, made Tiramisu for Christmas dinner today. This is supposedly the original recipe, invented in about 1970 by a dessert chef in Treviso, Italy. Spoiler: if you are counting calories, read no further! There will be healthy recipes for future days that are not Christmas. Four egg yolks 1/2 cup sweet marsala wine 16 oz mascarpone cheese 12 oz espresso 2 tbs cocoa powder 1 cup heavy cream 1/2 cup granulated sugar ~40 lady fingers (enough to layer a 13x9" pan twice) Stir 2 tbs sugar into espresso and chill in fridge. Boil water in a saucepan.Whisk egg yolks in a pyrex bowl (large enough to fit over the sucepan without falling in but not too broad at the base) until they became a light and fluffy cream. Whisk in remaining sugar and wine until well blended. The mixture should be frothy and uniform. Set the pyrex bowl over the water, like a double boiler, and stir assiduously. Don't let it "scramble"! As the liquid thickens it will begin get custard-y out as the bubbles of froth disappear. Stop when it is just hot enough to slowly bubble and has reached a rich yellow in color. Set the custard (known in Italian as zabaglione and in French as sabayon) aside to cool. Whip the cream in a large mixing bowl. Whip/mix the mascarpone in a separate medium mixing bowl. Add the mascarpone to the now-cool custard, beating well until smooth and blended. Fold this mixture carefully, with a spatula, into the large mixing bowl of whipped cream, taking care not to beat the cream too hard -- you don't want butter, or the tiramisu filling won't be light enough. When it is evenly distributed, with a few flecks of yellow and white, set it aside. Fill a bowl with the espresso and dunk each ladyfinger one by one. One second per side should be sufficient, too long and it will fall apart (I did a few of those last night -- delicious!). Lay them side by side and end to end in the baking pan so that they cover the entire bottom. Spread the filling on top so that it is covered. Repeat with one more row of dunked lady fingers. Cover with the other half of the filling. Sift cocoa over the top to cover. Chill for at least four hours in the fridge. Merry Christmas!
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