Failed tiramisu - the crazy mistakes that I make in the kitchen.

So this week is a little bit special. First of all, I'm sorry for the late post, I was travelling, and I am in New York right now, so I may post a day earlier or later. Secondly, today's post isn't about a really good dish I made, it's a story about a fail of mine. Fails are a part of cooking, and for me more than anyone. I have no experience and I love to experiment and create my own recipes, and making mistakes is a part of that. Very rarely, though, do multiple fails line up the way they did here.

The first mistake: Tiramisu has a few main ingredients - mascarpone cheese, eggs, cream and coffee are the four main ingredients, and as such, one needs to know how to use them. The first fail in this was in the ideation stage. I thought it might be nicer to make a more airy tiramisu which was almost as airy as a mousse, but with the texture of a tiramisu. In a mousse, egg whites are a key ingredient, so I started searching for how egg whites are used in tiramisu. The whites are whipped to stiff peaks, but with enough effort, you can spoil your eggs by over-beating them. That's mistake no. 1 of this tiramisu. I whipped the eggs so much that they actually got over whipped, but I didn't pay attention, so they actually made it in to the tiramisu. That gave it a weird texture, but by then I'd already committed. However, it was the least of the issues. 

The second mistake: I had combined three different recipes to make my own recipe, and when I did that, I made a big mistake. I forgot that if I add hot egg yolks to anything with egg whites, the egg whites will definitely cook. Again, I didn't pay attention while cooking, and I poured some of the egg yolks onto the whites. Luckily I had just started pouring when I realised, so I could remove the cooked whites, but that's just luck. 

The third mistake: Both of the egg mistakes didn't really affect the tiramisu too much because the whites still made it light, and I got the cooked parts out immediately, but the big mistake came with the mascarpone cheese. Now I always say that experience cannot be substituted in the kitchen, and that's one of the difficult parts of cooking for me. In this case, I had just bought some mascarpone cheese that morning, and it was nowhere near expiry, so I figured it was safe to use. It also tasted okay, so I wasn't concerned. My mother later told me that the big red flag was that it was completely crumbly and not at all creamy, and that it wouldn't blend properly with a hand blender. So I made the tiramisu, and then I ate a good bit of it while waiting for my parents. To be fair, the flavour was great. I added some gingerbread spices to the cream, and used a little bit of crumbled lotus biscoff biscuits on top, which I thought was a very good decision. However, by the next day, I wasn't feeling too good. 

The aftermath: As I mentioned, I'm in new york right now. Combine the last line of the last paragraph with that and you might start seeing the problem. The day before I had to leave on a 22 hour long flight, I had severe food poisoning. However, after some help from a very good doctor, I managed to make it through without much digestive distress. After I reached NYC, I was perfectly fine, but I got lucky. One more tiramisu and I may not have been as fine.