You will love this spring-summer version of the tiramisù.

In the depths of winter we made the traditional tiramisù with coffee and cocoa, now we’re going to make it with bright red strawberries.

The strawberry season arrives early in the year in Italy. In fact the first strawberries of the season arrive in the shops in March, coming from the region of Basilicata which is way down south of the ‘boot’ of Italy.

You might want to eat them au naturel with some lemon juice squeezed over as a healthy sweet snack or in a smoothie with a banana and plant milk, and that’s great but… this recipe is for those special occasions when you have guests coming over or you just want to make a nice dessert for your loved ones, once in a while.

WHAT YOU NEED

• 500g strawberries
• 250g Savoiardi sponge fingers
• 250g mascarpone soft cheese
• 3 eggs
• 100g sugar
• 100 ml water

LET’S MAKE IT:

Strawberries
Give the strawberries a quick rinse under cold running water and then pat them dry with a tea towel. Cut off the stalk and green leaves at the top.

Next take around 200 g of those strawberries and put them in a blender with the water, 30g of the sugar and blend until you have a smooth purée with a wonderful aroma of fresh strawberries.

Finely slice the remaining strawberries and put them to one side. You’ll use them at the end to decorate the dish.

Eggs
Separate the eggs and put the whites in a large bowl with a pinch of salt. Use an electric whisk and go go go until they make snowy white peaks.

Now use the same whisk, you don’t need to wash it, to whisk the egg yolks with the remaining sugar (70g) until the colour changes from bright to a pale yellow/cream colour.

Mascarpone
Whisk in the creamy mascarpone to the egg yolk mixture.

Finally, fold the egg whites into the mixture. Do this gently so that you don’t lose all the air you’ve just whisked in. It doesn’t need to be blended to a cream.

Assembly
We’ve finished preparing our ingredients. Now we can create our dessert.

Put a layer of savoiardi sponge fingers in a flat serving dish. Pour over a generous amount of the strawberry purée. Some of it will be soaked up by the sponge immediately and the rest will be taken up after a few hours in the fridge. So don’t worry if looks like there’s too much purée in there.

Now add a layer of the mascarpone mixture.

Repeat with another layers of savoiardi, purée and mascarpone. It depends on the size of your serving bowl. Maybe you’ll have more layers, just continue until everything is finished.

Take the sliced strawberries and use them to decorate your dessert.

Cover the dish with clingfilm and put it in the fridge for at least two hours before eating to allow the flavours to meld….

ALTERNATIVES

Now that you’ve mastered this dessert, remember that you can present it in different ways.

You can break up the sponge fingers into individual serving dishes or pretty glasses and spoon over the purée and mascarpone cream that way and top it with a cute baby strawberry. This is definitely more fiddly to do, but the result is nice.

Or serve it deconstructed in a large bowl with the sponge fingers sort of thrown in artistically and the other ingredients following suit.

After all, it doesn’t have to be a formal dessert. It can be as messy as you like. I once found a tiramisù presented like that at the buffet table of a country wedding reception and I thought it looked so cool!

So welcome the Spring and enjoy those strawberries.