Tiramisu

I recently inherited a collection of ladyfinger cookies and did what anyone else would do in my position: made tiramisu. Barefoot Contessa cookbooks are some of my favorites and I decided to use her recipe. Glancing over the recipe before going to the store, it calls for mascarpone cheese. I forgot to write down how much cheese I needed which I usually remember to do.

So I got to the store and found mascarpone cheese. Turns out that it is an Italian cream cheese and it is being sold for $4.oo an ounce. Now I am willing to spend some money to make things right (never use dried basil when you can use fresh is my motto), but 4 bucks for 1 ounce of cream cheese is a little much, even for me. So I bought a can of 8 ounces of light American cream cheese (a store brand) for $1.19. When I arrived home, I read that I needed 16 ounces of this stuff. To make the recipe the way it called for required at least $64 to make the tiramisu according to the direction. That doesn't even take account for the rum I bought too!