Tiramisu cupcakes

The Martha Stewart team sent out the recipe for these tiramisu cupcakes in the days leading up to the launch of their "Cupcakes" book and also featured this recipe on the flagship show during Martha Stewart's "Cupcake Week."
Homemade tiramisu, lady finger biscuits topped in espresso, topped with a whipped mixture of mascarpone, egg yolks, and sugar, and topped with cocoa, is a light, airy confection that should fall apart in your mouth with every bite.
I had high hopes for this recipe, especially after the chocolate-spice cupcakes I made from the same book, but it fell flat.

Substitutions:
I didn't make any substitutions.

Would I make this again?
I don't think so. The cake batter was dense and heavy and dry, nothing like an airy pound cake nor like the soaked ladyfingers in a real tiramisu. The recipe also makes it sound as though the tops of cupcakes will easily soak up the coffee-marsala syrup when you brush them, but it took me a good full hour to go brush the tops, let them soak, and repeat.

The syrup indeed softened the cupcake itself but didn't fully soak through until I took a wooden skewer and poked the tops of the cupcakes.
Meanwhile the frosting, while delicious, was too heavy and not fluffy enough. Perhaps these cupcakes suffered from their comparison to real tiramisu, but they take so long to make that I wouldn't bother.

Grade:
Three stars out of five. This grade may seem a bit generous considering my critique, however I thought it was an inspired idea and could be improved with some tweaks.