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cooking classes in tuscany and private chef at your holiday home: mascarpone cream and amaretti crumbles in a glass, quick, easy and chic dessert

Erika Elia — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 14:00:47 +0000

cooking class in tuscany: how making a chic and fast dessert

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cooking class in tuscany: how making a chic and fast dessert

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Last Summer, running some Cooking Classes in Tuscany with some students from U.S.A., I thought the first time to this dessert.

cooking class in Tuscany: how making a chic and fast dessert

In fact, while tasting some “savoiardi” (Italian for ladyfingers), someone told me about his love for Amaretti cookies and Amaretto di Saronno liqueur. Since that moment I decided to create a dessert in a glass with a layer of amaretti crumbles.

I made it the first time for Christmas lunch at my home. My mum and brother live in Grosseto, South of Tuscany, and here in Pisa I have my father and my stepmother; it’s so difficult to be all together and when there’s a special occasion I always take the advantage to invite everyone at my home. So I prepared the Mascarpone Cream with Amaretti Crumbles and dark chocolate flakes for 8 people in total and this is the same dose in the below recipe.

It’s an easy and fast recipe at all, but definitely gorgeous and you can imagine how tasteful and luxurious. In a few words, this is a dessert that will wow your friends or everyone who’ll taste it. Because of its elegant and beautiful aspect, I recommend to make it on a special occasion.

Because of its easiness and speed, I’ll definitely add this to the Private Cooking Classes in Tuscany Menu, our students can make it with no problem even if at their Holiday Homes.
Nowadays the most successful dessert in cooking classes is the Tiramisu and I’m so happy when my students post some pictures on Facebook or Instagram about some recipes that they made during their Summer cooking classes in Tuscany, when everything is easier: it’s a way to remind the cheerfulness and spirit of some memories in Tuscany. It’s a way to keep in touch and I think is the best way to use Social Networks as well.

Margot, a friend from Nederlands, posted her Tiramisu pictures right some days ago, and some guys from the USA made the same with their Italian Menu Soirée; click Here to see our Facebook Album with some pictures and dishes from our students once at home.

As I told you this dessert is very similar to Tiramisu (the cream is the same!) and it’s a very quick one.

I love spoon-desserts and the same is for our customers and students; click on the name of the following desserts which you can make in our cooking school in Tuscany: Bavarese, Zuppa Inglese, Zuccotto Toscano, Sicilian Cassata

I’m often looking for easy and fast recipes since they’ve to be suitable both for Private Dinners in Tuscany and Private Cookery Courses. In fact, as Private Chef than as Cooking Classes coach, in our itinerant restaurant and cooking school, we prepare everything from scratch, and on the spot…that’s no possible when the meal is complex and requires long preparation.

As my granny often said: A homemade meal, prepared from scratch, even if simple it tastes delicious and is inevitably made with love!

Especially in Tuscany, a tourist often goes home after visiting our sites, regretting not having been able to truly savor the taste of their favorite Tuscan dish; this is impossible after a fully hands-on Cooking Class and bringing at home the recipes from this Italian cookery class.

The goal of my job as Cooking Coach and Personal Chef is in fact to offer:

the chance to learn to cook and to be able to enjoy it whenever you want
a cooking class authentic experience; only fresh and seasonal ingredients, local produce

Just some tips to follow:

It’s necessary to have some glasses or glass bowls where to put it. You’ve to see the layers, that’s why is so nice. Since I had porcelain cups and just a few glasses for dessert, I used the glass container from Ikea candles and it turned out very well because it’s better to have something larger on the top.
Soak very slowly Amaretti crumbles with the Coffee and Amaretto di Saronno moisture, pouring this one from the top a bit at a time, waiting that amaretti crumbles have absorbed all the liquid. This is a very important step, otherwise, you could risk obtaining a too wet layer of cookies and they’d lose their crispness.
Apart from making a cream with the right texture, that’s the most important thing, the chocolate will be the touch giving a particular added value to your dessert. Buy a very good quality one, it represents the starting and ending note of flavor while tasting the dessert. I bought a semisweet one with coffee powder inside, the flavor is fantastic and it recalls the coffee that you can taste at the last layer of the dessert.
Buy Amaretti di Saronno cookies; click HERE to buy on Amazon
Buy the original Amaretto di Saronno liqueur

Salva

Mascarpone Cream and Amaretti crumble in a Glass

Recipe by Erika Elia (CuocheinVacanza.com)

Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 0 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes
Serves: 8

Ingredients

4 expresso coffee small cups
3 eggs
4 tbsp caster sugar
500gr fresh mascarpone
6 tbsp Amaretto di Saronno Liqueur
box (250 gr) of amaretti cookies (about 6 each person)
dark chocolate with coffee powder to make flakes or chocolate crumbles

Instructions

Make the espresso or moka machine coffee and let it cold
whip 3 egg whites and set them apart
whip 3 egg yolks with 4 tbsp of sugar until a pale yellow color
add to this cream the mascarpone cheese and stir well, but slowly: no lumps!
pour 2 tbsp of Amaretto di Saronno and mix
add the whipped whites folding, from top to bottom
crumble the amaretti cookies in a paper bag; still remain crumbles, not powder
pour in 4 tbsp of Amaretto di Saronno in the cold coffee and mix
pour this coffee-liqueur mixture over the amaretti crumbles, slowly, until they absorbed all the liquid and become brown
assemble a layer of the crumbles on the bottom of a glass
then a generous layer of mascarpone cream (help you with a spoon or a sac-poche)
sprinkle the dark chocolate flakes on the top

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#Canada: French Macarons! After a cooking class in Tuscany is so beautiful to keep in touch and share recipes…

Erika Elia — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:34:00 +0000

Here is a recipe from a student who partecipated in a CuocheinVacanza cooking class and with wich we keep in touch. She is Kelly Diewert and now, from Canada, she’s delighting herself and her dears with her new passion: French Macarons!

I can’t forget that beautiful coooking class experience: Kelly asked me to bring my daughter Ginevra (the same age of Kelly’s daughter, Page) at her holiday home in Tuscany. The girls could meet and share the cooking class together with us mums. In fact they didn’t talk much, but Ginny always reminds that day of late July and wrote about this experience in her private diary, just got home.

Well, about this recipe, you know you’ll need time and patience and, above all, you need to be “precise”. This is the rule for everyone dedicating to the patisserie. When cooking something “salted” you can go ahead with the help of your “eyes”, but if you’d like make perfect cakes, desserts, cookies…you’ve to “misure” and be very careful to every step.
This always applies, even for the simplest pastries like Chocolate Salami or Crostata (Tart) with jam.
That’s why, maybe, many people often say they don’t like or are not able, to prepare cakes.

Anyway, don’t surrender, you’ve just to follow the steps you’re reading and you’ll obtain a great satisfaction!

Macarons are elegant, nice, colored and above all exquisite!

Don’t forget that this is a TESTED recipe and you’re sure of the ingredients, quantity and results.

I lost my time yet yesterday, following a recipe on the web whithout thinking that the last step was completely unreliable. I was fortunately preparing the dinner for my family, so I just called the dish with another name and I added one ingredient to adjust the flavor.

This is no often possible, you know!

Many thanks dear Kelly, hoping you’ll come again here in Tuscany for a new “adventure”, looking forward a new recipe from you.

What else?
Try these French Macarons guys, they will wow your friends, for sure!

The French Macarons (apparently the French version is less forgiving than the Italian!)

Recipe by Kelly Diewert

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups icing sugar
1 cup almond flour/ground almonds
3 large egg whites at room temperature – tip: they are easier to separate when cold
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 pinch salt
1/4 cup superfine sugar
2 to 3 drops gel food coloring
1/2 teaspoon vanilla, almond or mint extract

Cooking Directions
Make the Batter
Line baking sheets with parchment and set aside.

Using a medium-mesh sieve, sift the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour into a large bowl and set aside. A couple tablespoons of unsifted course almond flour may remain – throw that out.
In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites on medium speed until foamy and the wires of the beater(s) leave a trail, 1 to 2 minutes.
Add 1 Tbs. of the superfine sugar and continue to whip for another 30 to 45 seconds. Repeat 3 times with the remaining superfine sugar.
Once all of the sugar is mixed in, continue whipping the whites until they turn glossy and stiff (when you lift the beater(s) from the bowl, the whites should hold a straight peak that doesn’t curl at the tip, 4 to 8 minutes more.
With a large rubber spatula, fold in half of the icing sugar mixture.
Once most of it has been incorporated, fold in the remaining mixture until just combined.
Add your desired flavoring and a tiny amount of gel food coloring until you get to your desired color. For mint/Nutella macarons, I used 2 drops of mint flavoring and a tiny amount of blue/green gel coloring.

Prepare the Cookies

Using a piping bag fitted with a ½ – to ¾ -inch round tip, pipe the batter onto the prepared sheets in rounds that are about 1 inch in diameter and ¼ to ½ inch thick, spaced about 1 ½ inches apart.
As you pipe, hold the bag perpendicular to the baking sheet and flick the tip of the bag as you finish each cookie to minimize the peaks.
Drop the sheet against the counter several times to flatten the mounds and pop any large air bubbles.
Let rest until the meringues no longer feel tacky, 20 to 30 minutes (this step is very important!).
Meanwhile, position racks in the top and bottom thirds of the oven and heat the oven to 300°F.

Bake the Cookies

Put 2 of the cookie sheets in the oven and immediately reduce the temperature to 300°F (let the third sheet sit at room temperature).
Bake, rotating the sheets and swapping their positions after 8 minutes, until the meringues are very pale golden, 15 to 20 minutes total. Cool completely on the baking sheets on racks.
Remove the meringues from the parchment and pair them by size.

Fill the Cookies

Using a piping bag with the same tip used to pipe the cookies, pipe 1 to 1 ½ teaspoons of the filling onto half of the cookies—you want to use just enough filling that it spreads to the edge when topped but doesn’t squish out much when bitten.
Top the filled halves with their partners.
Store them in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 day or in the freezer for up to 2 weeks.

Mint Nutella Filling:

½ c. Nutella
¼ c. Butter (never margarine!)
2 c. icing sugar
2 drops of mint flavoring
1 tablespoon milk
Mix in stand mixer on medium until thoroughly combined. Add another teaspoon of additional milk if the mixture is too dry.