Prior to the assigned cooking, the only cooking I have done is with my family or on my own. I was hesitant to cook with such a large group but excited to see how it would go. We initially decided to make bruschetta, thinking it was something we couldn’t mess up. After being challenged to make a more difficult recipe we decided to make tiramisu and I’m so glad we did! Before making it I always thought it was a complex dessert and was worried we would do at least one part of it wrong. Other initial concerns were finding the ingredients and cooking in such a small kitchen with so many of us.

Conad was busy in the evening, which didn’t help our frazzled search for these mysterious ingredients. With help from a few Conad employees, we managed to find everything we needed. Next step was to find the necessary supplies in the kitchen which is stocked with various utensils but lacking many important things. We discovered we had a mixer (!) which was great because I’m not sure how we would’ve made the whipped cream without it. After preparing ourselves, we hung around the living room waiting for someone to get the motivation to tell us all to start. Luckily, Brooke took the lead and started delegating tasks. This was perfect because with a few people working at a time everyone could work on part of the recipe and the kitchen never got too crowded.

A lot of the recipe was fairly simple. We separated egg whites and combined them with sugar. The next step involved learning a new method, the double boiler method, which consisted of us placing the combined eggs and sugar in a bowl on top of boiling water and stirring occasionally. We then added the mascarpone to the mixture. After this we slowly made the whipped cream which we folded into the other mixture. While some of us did this, the others were dipping ladyfingers in coffee and lining the pan with them. We weren’t sure how to make coffee since all we had was a mokapot so we used the espresso-like product from the mokapot instead. We added a layer of the tiramisu cream on top of the ladyfingers, then put another layer of soaked ladyfingers on top of that, and topped it off with a final layer of cream. We sprinkled some cocoa on top and just like that we had finished our tiramisu! The process was simpler than I imagined it would be and went more smoothly than anticipated.

None of us tried the tiramisu before bringing it to class so I was a little weary of what the final result tasted like. I was very pleasantly surprised when I got my piece! We were happy to hear such positive feedback from the class as well. I’m glad we chose to do tiramisu because now I know how to make one of my favorite desserts and am less afraid to try seemingly challenging recipes!