Another day, another cake hour in student cake month. Today we had a tiramisu - sort of. If you go back to a few blog posts here you will notice that we have had our share of tiramisus. Furthermore, a graduated Italian colleague had spoiled us by frequently bringing in one from an authentic Italian recipe - or so we were lead to believe. Hence we are somewhat snobbish when it comes to this particular dish. There have been a few attempts to supplant the recipe but they were unsuccessful.
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| A bowl full of tiramisu...sort of! |
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| There is an added layer on top! |
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| It's missing the powdered cocoa but the whipped cream is a great substitute! |
Today our student competitor brought in his version of a tiramisu. Clearly it was different. Notice the lack of cocoa powder on the top. Instead the top was a layer of whipped cream. That is not a usual ingredient and the top layer is normally mascarpone. Since it is whipped cream we surely don't mind but for tiramisu purists this could be an issue. Under the whipped cream was the requisite mascarpone layer(s) and the lady fingers. Since this is a variation on the classic recipe we dubbed it a pseudo-tiramisu.
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| Whipped cream, mascarpone and lady fingers - almost a tiramisu! |
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| Its' got the layers! |
That doesn't mean we didn't like it. Hell, no! If you are going to add anything to tiramisu whipped cream would always be a good idea. It added another layer of lightness to this version that went will with the mascarpone. The lady finger were fine as was the mascarpone cream. Said cream had a little more texture that what we have had and it's not clear why. it tasted good though. We weren't sure if this recipe included the lady fingers being dipped or soaked in coffee or if the obligatory rum or amaretto was included. It didn't matter because the pseudo way it was prepared was fine with everyone and we give it a four and a half star rating.
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| Four and half stars with some consideration for the bowl! |
With the amount of people that have been showing up for cake hour we just managed to have enough to give folks a reasonable tasting. For those that wanted more there was an unannounced surprise. A former colleague who moved on to medical school in Tennessee, of all pieces showed up for a visit as she is summering doing research nearby in Boston. As she well knows the cake hour drill, she brought with her an additional cake treat as well as a bottle of vino. This enabled us to give a little extra to all.
The cake we called a tiger cake. It was a chocolate roll with vanilla cream that was frosted with chocolate which was then overlaid with stripes of vanilla. It looked a little bit like the negative of tiger stripes. The cake was good although a few found it to be too sweet. It might have been better if the filling had been whipped cream which is often seen in one of these. But it was a nice unexpected treat.
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| It could also be a caterpillar! |
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| Chocolate roll - make that white sugar cream whipped cream and its a hit! |
We were going to save the bottle of wine for another day but someone suggested cracking it open and it was done. A bit of a wine tasting ensued. There was also a bottle of champagne. Now you would think having a bunch of students around, presumably with some affinity for alcoholic beverages, when a bottle of red wine and a bottle of champagne are offered up, that there would be some celebration. Surprisingly that was not the case. We take that to mean that they were anxious to get back to work and not that they are total neophytes and unappreciative of good wine. In the end, since only about three people tried the red wine we stuck with that and the champagne will wait for another day.
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| Now to appreciate a good merlot! |
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| Ahh, so great to be back in PVD! |
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