Tiramisu Part 1 - Biscotti

I am making Tiramisu this week. I have been gathering ingredients which has proved more difficult than I first thought it would be. The recipe calls for mascarpone, but apparently Northeast Iowans are not big consumers because I couldn't find any. Now to me ricotta seems similar enough that I am willing, without too much angst about authenticity, to make this replacement. Next the recipe calls for either biscotti or ladyfingers. But for the life of me I cannot find ladyfingers in our town and the biscotti was too expensive to put into a dessert where it is going to get wet. So I came home with butter cookies. But I was not satisfied with this replacement. All this brings me to biscotti making.

So I pulled out Joy of Cooking and used their recipe for Plain Biscotti. It is very tasty, with a nice almond flavor. It is nice to have a good biscotti recipe to use. I think I will make this again just for eating with coffee. Next time I think that I will put toasted almonds in it or anise flavoring or both.

So step 1 of Tiramisu making is complete. Next up is making espresso in my Mocha(or Moka), which is an Italian personal espresso maker. More on that tomorrow.