Pieramisù

On my trip to Italy, I went to a little place called ZUM everyday in Rome.  ZUM is a tiramisù café.  ZUM is amazing.  They have a tiramisù called Gusto ZUM, that has a layer of chocolate hazelnut spread in it.  I decided that would make a great pie.

Ingredients:
18 ladyfingers
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/3 cup of melted butter
2 tablespoons of espresso powder
3 egg yolks
3 tablespoons of sugar
8 oz of mascarpone
3/4 cup of heavy cream
1/2 cup of chocolate hazelnut spread
cocoa powder

Directions:
Pulse together ladyfingers, brown sugar, and espresso powder in a food processor.  Drizzle in melted butter.  Press into a pie plate.  Refrigerate.  Preheat oven to 300oF.  Bake crust for 10 minutes.  Vigorously whisk yolks and sugar in a double boiler until it has tripled in size (5 to 8 minutes).  Remove the bowl from heat and stir in the mascarpone.  Whip the cream until it holds firm peaks.  Fold whipped cream into the mascarpone mixture.  Spread half the filling in the bottom of the crust and chill the other half.  Melt the chocolate hazelnut spread and pour over the filling in the crust.  Pipe the remaining chilled filling over the chocolate hazelnut layer.  Dust with cocoa powder.  Refrigerate overnight before serving.

This tasted amazing.  However, the chocolate hazelnut spread turned hard in the refrigerator.  Next time, I would dilute it with the other 1/4 cup of heavy cream (since you know I bought an 8 oz container).  I think that would solve that problem.  Also I did not chill my second half of the filling, so my piping looks like crap.  Chilling it would definitely help.  Also, this slice was cut after only 3 hours in the fridge.  The slices cut the next day looked much better and tasted much better.

Piece out!
Justin