January Recipes: Berry Charlotte

One of my neighbor's birthdays is in the end of January and since I've moved in I started a little tradition of baking or cooking each of my neighbors whatever he or she would like for their birthdays. Usually I have them tell me their favorite flavors and favorite desserts and then I do some kind of combo or take on them.

This particular neighbor is one of the tricky kids I know that "doesn't like sweets" but when you ask him what his favorite sweet flavors are, he has quite a lot. He also seems to manage to eat other peoples' bday sweets just fine. He makes things difficult!

I finally got it out of him that he liked berries of all kinds, lemon meringue pie, and cream pies. Last year he got lemon meringue cupcakes, so that pie was out. Cream pie looked intriguing, but they've never been my favorite, so I stuck with the berry idea and perused my new Bon Appetit Desserts cookbook in the hopes that something would jump out at me.

Something did: a Berry Charlotte. If you are like me and have never heard of this, think tiramisu but instead of chocolate and coffee, it's blackberries, raspberries, and raspberry liqueur.

Barely adapted from Bon Appetit Desserts:
Berry Charlotte
(according to the cookbook, it's a french dessert that has it's own fancy little mold. I didn't have anything like it so I used an angel food cake pan...more on that trick below)

-1/4 c sweet white wine (or if you don't want to buy a whole bottle of sweet wine because you don't really like sweet white wine, go to the chilled booze section and get one of those mini - I'm talking baby sized, not just a 1/2 bottle - bottles of cheap wine. I think they're Sutter Home maybe. Get a rose or whatever pink one they have and use that instead. I did and everything tasted just lovely)
-2 large egg yolks
-6 T sugar divided
-1 8-oz container mascarpone cheese
-1 12-oz bag frozen raspberries, thawed, drained, juices reserved (I think the best way to do this is to put them still in the bag in a bowl of really hot water until they feel warm to the touch and squishy inside. Then pour them through a strainer into a big bowl and put the berries in a different bowl)
-1 12-oz bag frozen blackberries, same as above
-2 T (or more, to taste) raspberry liqueur, Framboise or whatever one you can find
-2 3.5 oz packages crisp ladyfingers (they suggest using Boudoirs or Champagne biscuits, I think I used one of those but I may have just grabbed the cheapest crisp ones and not worried about it...)

-Whisk wine, egg yolks, and 3 T sugar in a large metal bowl/double boiler to blend, set over saucepan of simmering water
-Whisk until thick and foamy and thermometer reaches 160 F (they say 2 min, mine took longer I think)
-Remove and let cool, once cooled stir in mascarpone
-Stir reserved, drained juices 1 T sugar, 1 T rasp liqueur in a medium shallow bowl
-Combine drained berries in another bowl, add rest of sugar and liqueur and toss to blend
-One at a time, dip ladyfingers into the berry juice mixture for about 1 second on each side and then press into the bottom of the pan*, trimming as needed to fill the bottom in one layer
-Spoon 1/3 c berries over the ladyfingers
-Top with 1/2 c mascarpone mixture
-Continue until you run out of ingredients, ending with ladyfingers brushed with remainder of juice
-Cover with plastic wrap and then place a plate on top and some heavy jars on top of the plate
-Refrigerate at least 2 hours and up to a day. I did it overnight and it worked out perfectly. Once chilled, remove weights and wrapper, slide knife around the edges and invert carefully onto a platter.
*I didn't have a charlotte mold or a bundt pan which I think might also work. I used an angel food cake pan which worked pretty well. I had to use 2 or 3 thinner strips of plastic wrap since those pans have the center piece that sticks up pretty high, and then I found 3 or 4 cups that were a little smaller than the width of the pan to weight everything down. Perhaps a slightly ghetto way to do it but it turned out great...although it probably was not the most gorgeous thing I've ever made...definitely one of the most delicious though! Again, sorry for the lack of photos.