Recipe: Tiramisu-shi

I haven’t been baking that much lately. I’d like to think it’s more because the weather has been insanely hot rather than because I’ve been insanely lazy. Ok, maybe it’s for both reasons.

And it’s absolutely a shame, because there are so many good fruits in this season! Strawberries for example. I mean, I would put them in every cake, they are delicious.

But since I’m lazy, here I am at the end of the strawberry season, rushing to make some nice dessert with them!

Well… at least it seems I succeeded in the end: I absolutely love this Tiramisu-shi, a tiramisù in the shape of sushi (I know they are actually “makis”, but “tiramisu-maki” was totally uninteresting as a name). 😛

The Tiramisushi is a recipe by Italian chef Luca Montersino and is made of a core of mascarpone cream mousse with fresh fruits (I used strawberries and kiwis to remind of the fish and avocado), wrapped in spongecake. The tiramisù is then rolled in cocoa powder, sliced like makis and served with a chocolaute sauce or ganache.

And yes, you can actually eat it with chopsticks! It’s probably one of the nicest and most captivating desserts I’ve ever made. It’s not super simple (rolling the cylinder of mascarpone mousse without shooting cream everywhere made me sweat!) but it’s manageable and it will certainly dazzle your friends! 🙂

Tiramisushi

Print recipe

Ingredients

250g	Heavy cream (min. 30% fat)
100g	Fresh strawberries
100g	Fresh kiwis
As needed	Cocoa powder
85g	Granulated sugar
25g	Water
8g	Sheet gelatin
250g	Mascarpone cheese

Rolled spongecake

45g	Egg yolks (~2 yolks)
110g	Eggs (~2 eggs)
110	Granulated sugar (for the egg yolks)
65	Egg whites (~2 egg whites)
15	Granulated sugar (for the egg whites)
65	Pastry flour

Mascarpone cream mousse

45g

Egg yolks

Directions

Whisk the egg yolks and whole eggs with sugar over a bain marie of simmering water

When the egg mixture reaches 45°C, remove it from the heat and whip it at high speed for around 10 minutes until it forms thick ribbons

Whisk the egg whites with sugar over a bain marie of simmering water

When the egg whites reach 45°C, remove them from the heat and whip to soft peaks at medium speed

Sift the flour in the egg mixture and stir gently with an upward movement

Gently incorporate the egg whites with an upward movement, taking care not to deflate the batter

Spread the batter evenly to 1cm on a parchment-lined baking tray

Bake at 240°C for 4-5 minutes (keep an eye on the oven) and let cool down on a wire-rack

Invert the baked spongecake on a sheet of sugar-sprinkled parchment paper and gently remove the other sheet of parchment paper

Mascarpone cream mousse

Heat the water and sugar in a saucepan on medium heat

Soften the gelatin in cold water

In the meantime, whip the egg yolks at high speed: when the sugar syrup reaches 121°C, pour it gently but steadily over the egg yolks to pasteurize them while keeping on whipping. Squeeze the gelatin and add it to the eggs. Keep on whipping until they reach room temperature. This mixture is now called pâte à bombe.

Place the mascarpone cheese in a bowl and soften it with a wooden spatula

Add the pâte à bombe to the mascarpone and stir gently

Whip the cream to soft peaks in a chilled bowl at high speed

Gently incorporate the cream in three times in the pâte à bombe mixture with an upward movement, taking care not to deflate the mousse.

Store the mascarpone mousse in the fridge and cut the fresh fruits into sticks in the meantime

Lay some long plastic wrap on your work surface and pipe a long strip of mousse using a plain tip. If the mousse is too liquid, it means that you either have to leave it a few more minutes in the fridge or freezer to set, or that you overmixed it and have to abandon this recipe 🙂

Lay the fruit stick together all along the strip

Optionally pipe another strip of cream over the fruits (if you omit this step, the final tiramisushis might be nicer and smaller

Grab the two extremities of the plastic film, wrap the cream and start rolling it by holding the edges...

...keep on rolling as if you were rolling a candy: the plastic wrap should adhere perfectly to the mousse. Don't worry if the mousse is becoming too liquid. Freeze the cylinder for at least a couple of hours.

When the cylinder is frozen, remove the plastic wrap and place along the short edge of the spongecake, after trimming the edges. Optionally you can brush the spongecake with raspberry purée or jam (not sugar syrup as the tiramisushi would become too soggy).

Roll the spongecake around the cream cylinder until one edge meets the rest of the spongecake. Cut the spongecake in this point, so that the cylinder is perfectly wrapped inside a single layer of spongecake (it is a tiramisushi, not a Christmas yule log). Wrap in plastic film and freeze for a couple of hours.

When the tiramisushi is frozen, roll it in cocoa powder and then cut it in equal maki-sized slices. You can store it in the fridge for around 4 days and then serve it with a chocolate ganache (pour 100g of boiling cream over 100g of chopped chocolate and stir with a spatula to create an emulsion).