Balls and Walnuts
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Tiramisu variations
I must be feeling better. After finishing my cases today, I lifted weights for twenty minutes, stewed in the sauna for ten, went grocery shopping, came home, and spent three hours in the kitchen.
Oh so cleverly I split some of my ground beef, using some for burgers (tonight), some for meatballs (tomorrow night). Mostly, though, I made Karen another tiramisu. My plan is working: thanks to this calorie-loaded confection of mascarpone cheese, whipped cream, eggs, espresso, and pound cake*, my wife has gained three pounds. If I can get her into the low nineties, my job is done.
(Yes, I realize I’m not doing her lipid profile any favors, but cholesterol will only harm her decades from now. Falling on an unpadded butt, that could happen any time.)
What’s a patissier to do? She doesn’t like cheesecake, so tiramisu is the most fattening dessert I can make (440 calories for a typical serving; but hey, I wonder if she’d like spaghetti carbonara?) She’s finally getting a bit sick of the same old same old, so tonight I used Amaretto for the liqueur, omitted the cocoa powder and shaved chocolate, and topped it with powdered sugar, cinnamon, and shaved/toasted almonds.
She’ll tire of this version soon enough. Here’s one for crespelle (crepes) stuffed with a tiramisu/zabaglione mixture and topped with berries, but it omits the espresso. Ignoring the essential question of whether tiramisu is tiramisu without the coffee, would Karen cringe at a version lacking that necessary caffeine kick? Probably. But my main objection is storage: those crespelle are going to go stale fast. I like a tiramisu which can last several days in the refrigerator.
From that same website, here’s an attractive recipe for parties: Duomo Tiramisu. It doesn’t look any more difficult than the standard recipe, but it sure would wow the guests.
Here’s a compendium of tiramisu recipes. Most of these are tiramisu trifles, the standard recipe taken in the berry direction or the chocolate direction, but there are a few unique items, like tiramisu pizza, peach brandy tiramisu, and for the coffee-hater in your family, root beer tiramisu. Of these, the peach brandy version sounds the most interesting. They don’t omit the espresso, which leads me to wonder how well the peach and coffee flavors will meld.
One of the joys of googling: you can test your imagination. Does banana tiramisu exist? Oh, yeah. Peanut butter tiramisu? Apparently so. Tiramisu erotica? Yuppers.
By the way: Tiramisu Toffee Trifle Pie might sound good, but any recipe calling for instant coffee granules and “mascarpone or cream cheese” — or cream cheese, are you fucking kidding me? — should suffer culinary kareis**.
I think I need to sleep on it. That shall be my goal: a novel application of basic tiramisu principles, one which preserves the caffeine and calories yet takes tiramisu into an altogether new direction.
Tiramisu hand roll, anyone?
D.
*Ladyfingers are traditional. We prefer the flavor of pound cake, pound cake is readily available in the grocery stores (not so, ladyfingers), so pound cake it is.
**One of those nasty punishments from Leviticus. I think it means “premature death.”
Oh, great. I’m stuck at work, and now I’m REALLY hungry.
Sorry. Now stop licking your monitor.
The hubs loves Tiramasu, I’m sort of meh on it. But I’d like to try and make it someday–thanks for the recipes.
As for deserts… what about chocolate mousse? Whipping cream is pretty fattening.
M
Hi DM!
Karen is not a big chocoholic. Good suggestion, though, and I wonder if something more heavily coffee-flavored might appeal to her. Or why not do a white chocolate mousse and use fresh fruit, preserves, liqueur, etc. to sex it up?
That picture looks fantastic. Maybe I will try out one of those recipes!
For variety, you could try making palacsinta (PAL-a-chinta), Hungarian pancakes. My late ex-mother-in-law made them regularly, and used to freeze the extras, filled and wrapped tightly in plastic wrap (she was incapable of cooking for less than 12, so there were always leftovers). This is a good basic recipe, for the batter. My late ex-mother-in-law used club soda, not milk.
For filling, she used quark (basically cottage cheese), mixed with apricot jam and walnuts, or Grand Marnier and poppy seeds. I bet they’d be really good with a mascarpone & espresso filling, too.
So all matter is basically made up of cottage cheese?
Well, Eastern Europeans use cottage cheese as a sweet, which, not my thing.
And yes, sex up the mousse. Call it Sexytime Mousse.
You could do a chocolate espresso mousse–might be fun.
M
IIRC a lot of mousse recipes call for coffee, anyway. What would it be like if we upped the coffee and subbed white chocolate for dark?
I’ll take “Mighty Tasty” for $200, Alex.
Yes, Doug, if you look closely enough, everything IS made of cottage cheese.
Quark (prononounced, with a thick eastern European accent, kvark) is a little sweeter and creamier than cottage cheese, and does work remarkably well as a dessert substance. But cottage cheese will do in a pinch. Buy the full-fat version, load it up with assorted sugars, and it’s mighty tasty.
And I want the recipe for Sexytime Mousse, when you invent it.