Milk & Stawberry Tiramisu'

Taste of Home Strawberry Trifle

Tortellino's birthday is today and I made him a special cake.  Usually, he requests a cake with real fruit, for the first few birthdays - because of a milk intolerance I made him Angelfood Cake with macerated berry topping.  The last couple of years I made fruit tarts - beautiful, shiny and well... boring! This year I was short on time and ideas but I saw a beautiful picture of a Strawberry Tiramisu' - most Itailans have never heard of this because it's an American invention!

The best part... nooo baking!

The picture of this dessert really appealed to me but the recipe didn't.  The thought of espresso and strawberries in the same bite really turned me off - plus.. I didn't really want to jack-up the kids on caffeine!

So, I took inspiration from a traditional Italian tiramisu' recipe.
- First I macerated half the strawberries in lemon and sugar and sliced the other half to decorate the cake

- Then, I made the original mascarpone/zabaglione cream from a "real" tiramisu' recipe

- Instead of dipping the Savoiardi cookies in cofee, I dipped them in whole milk
- In my transparent pyrex lasagna casserole I lined the bottom with milk-dipped cookies, then I sprinkled a little bit of the strawberry syrup from the macerated strawberries on top.  Next, a layer of mascarpone cream mix, then a layer of drained macerated strawberries, another light layer of mascarpone cream, milk-dipped cookies, sprinkle of strawberry syrup, and mascarpone cream.  On this white canvas I decorated the cake by sprinkling a little bitter chocolate powder (again nodding to the original) and then used strawberries and melissa leaves (a lemony tasting herb) to decorate the top.

Yum, yum!  So easy and I definitely plan to make it again... maybe next time with pictures!!!