The February 2010 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Aparna ofMy Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

The original recipe sources are:
Mascarpone Cheese – Vera's Recipe (Baking Obsession) for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese.
Savoiardi/ Ladyfinger Biscuits – Recipe from Cordon Bleu At Home
Tiramisu – Carminantonio's Tiramisu from The Washington Post, July 11 2007

Seeing how J and I are still sort of doing the Specific Carb Diet, I adapted the recipe to fit the guidelines. It was definitely a challenge, but that's ok – the results were quite tasty, even if it wasn't technically tiramisu, but more of a Tiramisu-Inspired Stacker.

For the ladyfingers, I used the Holiday Cookies recipe from The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook by Elana Amsterdam. These are meant to be cut-out cookies, but I dropped them by the spoonful so they turned out fairly uniform in size.

I made marscapone by dripping ¾ cup SCD yogurt. I should have taken pictures of the process and of J's face when he opened the fridge and saw a bowl with a wooden spoon across the top, with a peach colored napkin tied to it, Hobo Bag style. After dripping it for 24 hours, it has the consistency of block cream cheese. I added a little lemon juice, honey and vanilla to it to cut some of the tartness.

After Googling "SCD Whipped Cream", I came across this gem. At first glance, it seems like a drawn out process just to have some creamy goodness, but really, the yogurt machine does most of the work. If you are like me and have zero self control when it comes to whipped cream, you will eat this with a spoon.

To add a bit of fruitiness, I made simple raspberry syrup, using fresh raspberries, lemon juice and honey. I put all of this into a saucepan and cooked it over low heat until the raspberries became mushable. I smooshed them a bit with a fork and let it continue to cook.

I tried to make Zabaglione and failed miserably. Upon further research, I realized what I did wrong – instead of stirring the mixture while it was on the double boiler, I was whisking. This adds too much air and doesn't allow the mixture of thicken. I did end up with some tasty coffee flavored foam, which I put on top of the stacker and mixed into the whipped cream, since Tiramisu wouldn't be Tiramisu without a bit of coffee flavoring.

To assemble the stackers, I put a small bit of whipped cream on a plate and placed an almond cookie on top (to stabilize the stack). Next, I put a dollop of whipped cream on the cookie, followed by a bit of the raspberry syrup. On the tiptop of the stack, I placed fresh raspberries on top of the whipped cream and spooned a bit of the failed Zabaglione foam on for additional flavor.

Again, this is in no way a substitute for Tiramisu. It is, however, in the spirit of the original dish.