Individual Tiramisu

On Father's Day I asked my dad what his favorite desserts were. One of his top favorites was Tiramisu, so a few days later I made this for dessert. I like the idea of having individual desserts, and didn't want to use raw eggs, so when I found this recipe I knew I had to try it. It was a very easy tiramisu recipe--I do want to try making a large sized tiramisu with raw eggs to see how they compare, though--and super dense and creamy and delicious.

One fun fact about people here back home: I went to Safeway to find the ladyfingers (didn't want to make them from scratch since I was already cooking a dinner I'd never tried before), and everyone was so much nicer than I'm used to. I was walking around and people just asked if I needed help and were super happy about giving me help, and even when multiple people had to be asked to find the ladyfingers, everyone was very sweet. Even at checkout the lady and bagging-boy were so friendly. So not used to that, but it was a good change from the usual grumpiness back where I went to college!

Individual Tiramisu
Recipe (slightly adapted by me) from Foodiebride

Soaking Syrup
1/2 cup strongly-brewed coffee or espresso
1 Tbsp sugar

Filling
8 oz reduced-fat cream cheese
8 oz mascarpone
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp strongly-brewed coffee or espresso
2 Tbsp milk

Assembly
6 5/6-oz clear cups
24 ladyfingers, purchased or homemade
1 oz semisweet chocolate, grated

In a small bowl, mix espresso and sugar, stirring until the sugar has disolved. Set aside to cool.

With your mixer, cream the mascaropone, cream cheese, vanilla, and sugar on medium-high for 3-5 minutes, until light and fluffy. The mixture should feel smooth (not gritty) when rubbed between your fingers.

Remove half of the mascarpone mixture and transfer it to a smaller bowl.

Add 2 Tbsp of espresso and mix well.

Add 2 Tbsp milk to the remaining filling and mix (this is just to thin the filling, the type of milk - whole, skim, etc - does not matter) well.

Trim the ladyfingers so that they come just below the top rim of the cups. Reserve the excess pieces. (The trimmed ends of the cookie are "the bottoms," the rounded uncut ends are "the top.")

Working with one ladyfinger and one serving at a time, quickly dunk the top half of the cookie into the soaking syrup and place in the plastic cup coffee-end (top) up.

Repeat with 3 more lady fingers, arranging them around the cup (if your ladyfingers are thin, you might need to use more than 4).

Place one of the reserved trimmed ends of the cookies into the bottom, followed by a spoonful of the espresso filling, the plain filling, and top with more ladyfinger pieces (when you run out of trimmed pieces, tear additional ladyfingers into small pieces to fit the next layer). Repeat 2 more times to fill the cup.

Sprinkle grated chocolate over the top.

Repeat the process for the remaining servings.

Loosely cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving.