The Cat-Version Tiramisu Cake

You know those people who always say, "Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels?"  Well, they are absolutely WRONG and I made the cake yesterday to prove that!

 This all started because I made coffee (decaf, cuz that was what I wanted) for our after church lunch thing that we do every week, but one of the guys really wanted caffeine.  So, I made another pot.  Consequently, I ended up with quite a bit of leftover coffee.  So, I searched for recipes that called for coffee as an ingredient.  I ended up making some BBQ sauce - and this cake, which I took to the church BBQ Monday night.

This is my take on a tiramisu cake - having never really eaten it before in my life, which is actually kind of a long time.  Instead of using coffee liqueur, I made my own coffee syrup which - if you add vodka, I learned, becomes a homemade Kahlua-type mixture.  However, I didn't poke holes in the cake to pour the coffee syrup into them.  

My other experiment was a substitution suggested on a cake mix box - using 4 egg whites in the cake instead of 3 whole eggs.  I also added a tablespoon of meringue powder, just to see what would happen.  I can tell you this, I will ALWAYS add the meringue powder and substitute all egg whites in a cake mix!  It came out so light and fluffy, and held together so well that it wasn't difficult at all to torte the layers!

This is what it looked like inside the cake...

To half of the batter, I added a combination of 1 tsp. instant coffee, which I smashed into a fine texture with the back of a spoon, and 1 tsp. cinnamon.

I filled the cake with a combination of mascarpone and softened cream cheese, mixed with some sour cream (didn't want to go buy heavy whipping cream) and some of my coffee syrup and powdered sugar.  This also came out very light and fluffy.

The frosting was the Wilton buttercream icing recipe to which I added coffee syrup instead of water until the icing was a good consistency for making a dam to hold in the filling (about a medium thick consistency).  I was able to use the same icing to pipe borders at the top and bottom of the cake.  I sprinkled cocoa powder on top of the cake and shaved some white chocolate curls on top.

Adam, who was one of the Sunday guys who came to the BBQ, not only enjoyed the coffee BBQ sauce on the steak we had, but also enjoyed the Cat-Version Tiramisu Cake.  But I saw a LOT of people taking slices of the cake and they all seemed to enjoy it.  :-)

It was very, very good... and WORTH it to just taste it, even if I did only take a tiny, tiny sliver of it!


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