Mascarpone mango-coconut squares

I had about 100gms of mascarpone cheese which I had made as a experiment.
I am going to make Tiramisu soon, but waiting for my sister to arrive from USA.  And mascarpone cheese was about to reach its lifetime :) so I decided to make something from it.  I searched for few recipes, referred 2-3 recipes and came with my own recipe. It can be made in layered approach as well, so you can stack up layers of this dessert, however keep a eye on amount of sugar you put in per layer. I am sweet tooth but I don't use much sugar in my recipes. 1. Too much sugar can make dessert just sweet not delicious, 2.It just kills main taste of dessert.

Just before putting everything in refrigerator

Ingredients:
1.  Mango pulp (or any fruit pulp not juice )
2. 100 gms mascarpone cheese (any cream cheese shall work as well)
3. 100 gms dessicated coconut
4. 50 gms icing sugar

Take a bowl and mix together mascarpone cheese, 80gms of dessicated coconut and sugar till smooth thick paste is formed. Now add mango pulp (or any fruit pulp) as per your taste and mix it well.

You are done :) surprised? well yeah this recipe don't require any cooking/baking at all. Take any square shape baking tin and grease it with little butter so that mixture won't stick to it. Then sprinkle remaining dessicated coconut into greased tin so that it will cover all tin. Pour mixture carefully in tin and make sure to level it properly. Put tin in fridge for about over night and then serve by cutting in medium sized squares.

You can sprinkle some more dessicated coconut before serving or pour some pulp around them. Enjoy chilled :)

End product :)

Home made Mascarpone Cheese

While reading through recipe for Tiramisu (a famous Italian dessert) I stopped at word Mascarpone Cheese? And I was like what is this thing and how one even pronounce it and where can I get this one in India.

So I visited few mega stores and realise that  this cheese is damn costly in India about 250Rs/100gms as it is generally imported. For tiramisu quantity required was about 500gms and I simply fainted by 250*5 calculation :) and it was just one of the ingredient. So I dropped plan to make Tiramisu completely . While reading about this cheese on Internet I came across Vera's page http://www.bakingobsession.com/2009/05/02/homemade-mascarpone-cheese/
and from that page I found out Shalini's page http://baketitude.blogspot.in/2012/01/mascarpone-chesse-home-made.html where she actually followed Vera's recipe to create this cheeese.

So I was like "hey hey hey, kick out expensive cheese, why not to make this cheese at home as Vera and shalini did?" So here it goes my first and thankfully successful trial for Mascarpone Cheese :)

As this was my first try I decided to go with lesser quantity and if it works then this will serve as baseline.

Things we need:
1. 200ml Amul fresh cream (25% fat)
2. 1/2 Tablespoon lime juice
3. Bigger shallow pan
4. A bowl to hold cream (flat bottom would be great)
5. spatula (wooden/silicon is preferred, but any spatula will do)
6. Sieve
7. Cheese cloth / cotton napkin

Here we go:
Fill up half a pan with water and bring it to boil. Meanwhile place 200ml cream in a bowl and keep aside. Once water starts boiling, lower the flame so that water will just simmer. Now place bowl in middle of pan in water. Stir occasionally  to make sure cream around edges of bowl to cook quickly and stick to bowl. About 7-10 minutes later small bubbles will start forming at edges of bowl, this time add half a teaspoon of fresh lime juice to cream and stir carefully to mix it properly.

Don't expect curdling action to take place, as cream will just start becoming thicker after you add lemon juice. Keep stirring occasionally for about 10 more minutes or until you could see clear strokes in bowl, or thick layer of cream seen on back of spatula. And you are done. Now turn off flame, remove bowl from water and keep aside to cool it down for about 20 minutes.  Meanwhile align cheesecloth with sieve.

Once cooled, transfer content of this bowl to cheesecloth and place it in fridge. Don't press this cheesecloth to remove excess fluid or so, just wrap it and set aside on sieve inside fridge. Keep it overnight, then remove from cheesecloth and transfer to clean air tight container and store back to fridge.

You can now use this fresh cheese for your Tiramisu recipe. Once done cheese did not appear as firm, but it becomes firm after refrigeration but still remains rich creamy and buttery.  Check image as how it looks like at end of refrigeration time.

Thanks to Vera and Shalini for their help :)