Okay, so after much gut-wranging here me and my crew decided to go forward with tiramisu for last night's Christmas dinner. We went out last Monday and bought all the neccessary ingredients including some options, and spent the day in the kitchen making small lots to test and taste over several days. What we found:
1) The best sabayon was produced by mixing 50/50 mascarpone with cream cheese, namely Nancy's brand organic spreadable cream cheese in the little tubs. Somewhat accidental a discovery: we weren't sure we'd be able to round up 9 pounds of mascarpone, so we tested the cream cheese blend just to find out how detectable that difference would be, and in fact we liked it best.
2) We tested our results over three days and found that the overnight rest was indeed neccessary, but not more. That is, the result was best when eaten the next day than left for two days, though there was nothing wrong with that. 24 hours seemed to have melded all the flavors and textures perfectly; after 48, the flavors seemed to flatten a bit.
3) We set out to make a version that have Tuscan flavors--the centerpieces we made for the table had tons of fresh citrus with stems and leaves we'd had flown up from Palm Springs wired into complex arrangements that included fresh artichokes and rosemary topiary--and it seemed appropriate and desirable to reflect some of that in our meal. We candied thick orange slices to make a tasty and attractive garnish alongside broken shards of 62% bittersweet chocolate. Then we added fresh orange juice to our espresso dip which we liked better than without, and finally we chopped up some of the candied orange and put that on a spoonful of the tiramisu, and that at last, on top of all the other adjustments we'd made, made us all go WOW. The orange was brilliant! So we doubled the amount of orange we needed for the garnishes, insuring that half an orange slice worth was present in each individual serving, some mixed into the sabayon and some forming it's own layer in the parfaits. Even I who came into this exercise not liking sweets and in particular thinking I didn't care for tiramisu cleaned my cup, much to my husband's disappointment. He can usually count on getting most if not all of my dessert.
4) The cups: unfortunately we could find nothing that would work as a cup except clear plastic short old-fashioned size cups--9 ounce cups about 3 inches tall with about a 4" rim. We tried several other options, including cupcake forms, and nothing worked. To draw the eye away from the cheap plastic cups then, at a Michael's store we found glittery 4" wide burnt-orange mesh ribbon that matched the shade of our orange slice garnishes which we cut in perfect squares to line the plates so that the presentation wasn't just a plastic cup on a dull white plate, and we additionally garnished each plate with sprigs of fresh dark green bay leaves.
We served the tiramisus with Banfi Rosa Regali, an NV sparkling sweet red wine of only 7% alcohol that everyone loved and which actually has an orange-like tang to the sweetness--dessert wines really never match desserts and IMO should never be served WITH dessert, but here's an exception: the match was flawless. You really did find yourself wanting to go back and forth from the wine to the tiramisu and back to the wine again. Really excellent.
Thanks again to all who encouraged the tiramisu choice and coached the finer points--it couldn't have worked out better.