LIVING IN SAN Francisco I never needed to make tiramisu. Why bother, when every Italian restaurant and cappuccino joint from Cortland Street to Columbus Avenue is ready to dish up huge, spongy, boozy squares listing sideways like Pisa's tower under the sheer weight of so much creamy fluff? A silly dessert to be so ubiquitous, I thought: all puff and no substance.

Then I went to Italy. There tiramisu is still ubiquitious, but it makes sense. Looking at the pantheon of Italian desserts, you can see where tiramisu comes from. Homemade desserts in Italy are all about accessorizing. The base is almost always something simple, like pan di spagna, a plain yellow sponge cake sold by weight in every pastry shop, or the long, light biscuits called savoiardi (what we call ladyfingers). The fun is not in the baking but in the layering. Think Versace, think the crazy-striped facade of Florence's Duomo and the swirling, multicolored marble confectionery inside so many Italian churches. Pastry cream and hot pink alkermes (a sweet-spicy Tuscan liquor) turn sponge cake into zuppa inglese; sweetened ricotta studded with candied fruit and bits of chocolate is the star of Sicily's cassata. It's the sum of the parts – and the fun of tossing around cream and liquor rather than fiddling around trying to make a perfect pie crust – that makes these kind of desserts rewarding.

And now that I've experienced mascarpone, I can understand the point of building a whole dessert around it. "Italian cream cheese" is the usual way of describing it, but what's sold in Italy – very casually, in plastic tubs at the supermarket – is nothing like the dense, slightly tangy, bagel-ready bricks known here as cream cheese. Mascarpone has the texture of soft, all-natural cream cheese and the pure, rich taste of sweet butter. Once you taste it, you can only imagine that everything would be better for a slather of it.

The beauty of mascarpone is what cajoled me back to this dish. Amazingly rich on its own, it doesn't need whipped cream, or custard, or a lot of different flavors – all of the overgilding that wrecked most of the Californian restaurant versions I'd had. In Italy the best tiramisu is also the simplest: eggs, sugar, mascarpone, a dash of marsala, a little textural ballast from the espresso-soaked ladyfingers, a whisper of bitter cocoa across the top. Like the name promises, it's just the pick-me-up any day needs.

Tiramisu

2 cups espresso or very strong coffee, cooled

3 eggs

1/3 cup sugar plus 2 tsp sugar

11/3 cups mascarpone

2 tbs marsala or rum

10-12 ladyfingers

1-2 tbs unsweetened cocoa

Before you start, make the espresso or strong coffee. Pour it into a shallow bowl to cool. Separate the eggs, yolks in one bowl, whites in another, discarding one white. Beat egg yolks with sugar for three to four minutes, until thick, creamy, and pale yellow. The mixture should form a ribbon when you lift the whisk or beaters. Add mascarpone and marsala or rum, beating vigorously until smooth. Wash and dry your beaters or whisk thoroughly, then beat egg whites with remaining two teaspoons of sugar until soft peaks form. Fold egg whites into mascarpone mixture.

Dipping first one side, then the other, dunk each ladyfinger briefly into the cold coffee – don't let them soak, or they'll get mushy and fall apart. Using half of the ladyfingers, closely line the bottom of a fairly deep dish, roughly three to four inches deep and eight to nine inches across. Cover with a generous blanket of the mascarpone mixture. Sift or sprinkle on one to two teaspoons of cocoa. Top with another layer of coffee-soaked ladyfingers. Cover with the rest of the mascarpone mixture. Sift another one to two teaspoons of cocoa over the top. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least four to six hours, or overnight. A good, long chilling firms up the fluff and lets the flavors bloom.