I was whipping up the heavy cream, powdered sugar, kesar mango pulp, and mascarpone cream for the mango tiramisu for my father-in-law’s birthday yesterday, and it suddenly dawned on me that something wasn’t quite right. I kept looking down into the bowl while mixing and wondering why there were tiny little white chunky blobs floating in my creamy mixture. And then… it hit me: the mascarpone cheese was not breaking up properly. I did the suggested thing of letting it sit on the counter for about 20-30 minutes before I mixed it, but that did not seem to help. And I was scared that if I kept using my hand mixer, it would turn my cream mixture into butter. So I eventually just relented and decided that I would continue assembling the mango tiramisu even with the uneven mango cream/mascarpone mixture.

When I served the mango tiramisu today, no one else seemed to notice the white chunky mascarpone bits. I noticed them in some bites, but I was at least relieved that overall, the chunks had melded in. I told my cooking friend about this, and she told me that she actually just read an article about how mascarpone is not all made equally. I advised her for the future that she should never, ever buy Whole Foods brand mascarpone cheese. I bought it in a rush to get the dessert ingredients in order in time, but normally, I would buy BelGioioso brand from Trader Joe’s, which always whips up easily. I checked with AI, and for future reference, Galbani and Ciresa brands are also supposed to be excellent, premium mascarpone brands to consider. Sorry, Whole Foods — you just didn’t cut it this time for me.