Flight of fancy: how pastry chefs experiment with tiramisu

Literally, "tiramisu" translates from Italian as "lift me up," but this expression also has a figurative meaning — "cheer me up." Indeed, this name is ideal for a delicate and airy dessert with a rich coffee and creamy taste. In addition, the sweet dish that many people love is particularly flexible and allows pastry chefs to cook it in different interpretations, while maintaining its identity and recognition. Izvestia found out which interesting versions of tiramisu surprise and delight sweet tooths in Russian restaurants and cafes today.

A new classic

It may seem surprising, but tiramisu is a newcomer dessert against the background of the centuries—old history of Italian gastronomy. The dish first appeared only in the late 1960s in the restaurant Le Beccherie in Treviso. According to legend, the chef of the restaurant, Roberto Linguanotto, accidentally added mascarpone cream to a mixture of sugar and eggs and, impressed by the taste, showed the discovery to the restaurateur Ado Campeol. Together, they refined the recipe using coffee-soaked biscuits and cocoa powder sprinkles. The novelty was not patented and quickly spread throughout Italy, and in the current century has become one of the most popular desserts in the world.

"Tiramisu is based on a combination of universally loved, understandable flavors: coffee, chocolate, delicate cheese, eggs, sugar," the pastry chef at the Four Seasons Hotel Lion Palace St. Petersburg told Izvestia Vyacheslav Kucherenko. — You don't have to be a gourmet to appreciate this harmony. At the same time, simplicity does not mean primitiveness: the balance of textures (air cream soaked in savoyardi, crunchy crumbs) creates a complex and absolutely complete feeling.

Tiramisu with gold leaf

Photo: Percorso

Another important factor in the popularity of tiramisu, our expert calls its democracy. Unlike many exquisite desserts that require a specific taste, this dish is loved by everyone, from children to adults, and is equally appropriate in the daily dining menu and on the festive table. It's not too heavy, not sickly sweet, but with bitter notes of coffee and cocoa, which perfectly reloads the taste buds at the end of any meal. At the Percorso restaurant, the pastry chef offers a reinterpreted version of tiramisu. Instead of strong coffee-based impregnation, it uses light sugar syrup with strawberry puree, which gives each layer a rich berry flavor.

"Tiramisu is suitable for any season, but depending on the season and the weather outside, you can add different notes to its composition," says Anton Lutsenko, chef of the Chudo—Yudo restaurant (Moscow). — The coffee taste refers more to warmth and homely comfort on a winter evening. And for a summer feast, mango-flavored pistachio or my favorite strawberry is better. We serve our Tiramisu for the princess with bitter chocolate, cocoa and a spectacular ball of thin caramel with golden flecks.

Tiramisu with taiga blueberries and cream with boiled condensed milk

Photo: Sadko

Guests love visually mouth-watering desserts with lots of cream, and in this sense, tiramisu pleases the eye with its lightness and beautiful cocoa layer, says the brand chef of Sadko restaurant (Krasnoyarsk) Mikhail Mikhailov. The obligatory base of the dish is savoyardi biscuits (lady's fingers) or others like them, which are almost always preserved even in experimental versions. The cream does not have to be strictly classic — on mascarpone and eggs. You can mix it by adding new strawberries, raspberries, strawberries, pistachios, sesame paste or poppy seeds. The coffee impregnation characteristic of the canonical version can also be replaced or adapted with other ingredients.

— At Sadko, we make tiramisu with taiga blueberries (which do not have pronounced acid or excessive sweetness), rich cream with boiled condensed milk and a pinch of salt, — adds our interlocutor. — When choosing ingredients, I am guided by the fact that mascarpone-based cream works with almost any berries. If the berry is more acidic, the balance is achieved through sweet cream or additional layers, such as caramel.

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Form and content

Tiramisu is prepared in large molds, from which portions are then placed on plates. However, recently, experiments have also touched on serving, and the Italian dessert has already been offered in the form of balls.

— This trend initially started in a foreign tiktok, — Naida Omarova, marketing director of the Bistro Mates chain (Moscow), explained to our publication. — In the case of tiramisu balls, it is the unusual pitch that is interesting, it turns out an unusual texture, more dense and structural. Our balls vaguely resemble potato cakes, but they are softer, with a rich coffee flavor and are made from ground savoyardi biscuits. They can be eaten separately or dipped in mascarpone cream, so they turn out to be more tender and juicy.

Tiramisu in the shape of balls

Photo: Mates

Our interlocutor also talked about the new trend idea of combining tiramisu with latte. Mates worked on a similar position, but abandoned the idea of launching, because the dessert was drowning in the glass and it was inconvenient to drink the drink.

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"We've all heard about umami more than once and we know that every chef tries to achieve exactly that fifth taste in a dish, combining sweet, sour, bitter and salty," the pastry chef of the Itameshi restaurant (St. Petersburg) describes the idea of his signature dessert Ksenia Solovyova. — In my Asian tiramisu, you can taste everything: bitter coffee syrup, sweet air cream, salted caramel with soy sauce, a little juice and essential oils of lemon peel. It turned out to be much more textured than the classic one, and its character is more complex due to the larger range of tastes.

Rye tiramisu with savoyardi, malt and fresh raspberries

Photo: "Chick"

The chef of the restaurant "Chick" (Moscow), Alexander Kischenko, suggests adding malt to the tiramisu, which will be responsible for the additional crispy component of the dessert. And raspberries are responsible for the sour notes in its version of sweetness. The berries and fruits in the dessert can be changed as the season progresses. Now it can be figs, and in late autumn persimmons will do. Malt can be replaced with different types of alternative milk, such as buckwheat, almond or pistachio.