Zuppa Inglese

Sponge soaked in red alchermes under two cooked cremas, one vanilla and one chocolate.

Egg. Not vegetarian — contains alchermes, which is coloured with kermes insects.

Ingredients

• 300 g savoiardi
• 200 ml alchermes
• 700 ml whole milk
• 6 egg yolks
• 180 g caster sugar
• 60 g plain flour
• 1 vanilla pod
• 80 g dark chocolate
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Method

1. Make a crema pasticciera: whisk the yolks, sugar, flour and salt, pour on the hot milk infused with vanilla, and cook, stirring, until it thickens and boils for a full minute to cook the flour out.
2. DIVIDE THE CREMA IN TWO AND MELT THE CHOCOLATE INTO ONE HALF. Two cremas from one batch, which is what gives the alternating bands.
3. Cool both with film pressed onto the surface.
4. DIP THE SAVOIARDI IN ALCHERMES, briefly, a second a side. Alchermes is a bright red spiced liqueur and its colour through the sponge is how this dessert is recognised — nothing else gives it, and rum or marsala makes a different pudding.
5. Layer in a glass bowl: soaked sponge, vanilla crema, sponge, chocolate crema, and repeat, finishing with crema.
6. This shares nothing with a tiramisu past layering and chilling: no coffee, no mascarpone, and the cream here is cooked with flour rather than built on raw or scalded yolks.
7. Chill 6 hours. It is served in spoonfuls from the bowl, not cut.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes