Most tiramisu recipes have you dip each ladyfinger in a bowl of coffee. This one doesn’t, and that is deliberate. Dipping saturates a porous cookie all the way through, and by the next day you’re eating cold wet coffee bread. Laying them in dry and pouring the coffee over as you build gives them only the minutes it takes you to assemble the dish — enough to flavor them, not enough to drown them. If you like a properly wet tiramisu this isn’t your method; if soggy ladyfingers have ever put you off the dessert, it is.
Four hours is the minimum, but 24 hours in the fridge transforms this dessert. The layers meld, the cream firms up, and the flavors deepen. Make it the day before and you’ll be glad you did.
In Step 1, the yolk mixture is ready when a slow ribbon falls and holds on the surface for a moment before dissolving. If it falls and disappears immediately, keep whipping. This step builds the airy structure the whole cream depends on.
This is our daughter’s dessert — she is the one who makes the tiramisu in this house, and every choice on this page is hers. We put whiskey in it exactly once, years ago, and it hasn’t been back since. Now Colin grinds the beans and pulls two cups through the Chemex, and she builds it from there.