Christmas dessert: Tiramisu

Yes, tiramisu.

The blending of two cultures (Swedish and American) while living in a third (France) can make 'traditions' tricky, and one old standby for dealing with it is to create a completely novel tradition. So developed the Christmas Tiramisu in our house.

Tiramisu is not my favorite dessert (I like fruit desserts ) but I like it enough. It's also not particularly difficult to make and most importantly in this house, it is not a temperature sensitive dessert. (My oven has one temperature setting: on/off.) My beloved cakes and cookies do tend to be temperature sensitive, and I will be delighted to return to baking desserts on that far-distant day when we have an oven with a semi-functional thermostat.

But, tiramisu has enough 'reputation' to make it special enough for a Christmas dessert. So, that's what this Swedish-American-Greek family in France makes for Christmas. Or should I say, that's what the American component of this family makes.

• A few words of advice: if you are making tiramisu for the first time and you're serving it at a semi-important function, you should know it is difficult to serve in a 'pretty' way. So, if this is the case, I recommend some clear glass serving dishes (even martini glasses would be great) and individual portions. You could even get fancy and do the cocoa sifting over a pattern to make the dessert top fancy (a snowflake sillhouette or mortarboard or other appropriate 'symbol' of the event).

• This recipe requires egg whites whipped to stiff peaks, and if you don't whip them fully, the texture is off. I whipped them by hand (I miss my beloved and reliable highest rated handmixer - the awesome KitchenAid 9-Speed Pro but what can you do?) My arm was ON FIRE by the end but I had success.

• Tiramisu is made with raw eggs. Get the pasteurized kind, and get them as fresh as possible. Pasteurized eggs are as rare as hen's teeth and people who 'get' vegetarians in France, so we walk on the wild side, but you don't have to.

Tiramisu Recipe: Franco-American-Svenska Style

• 500 grams (one pound or 17.6 ounces if you want to be picky) mascarpone

• 6 pasteurized eggs, fresher is better

• 250 grams (1 1/4 cups) plus one tablespoon sugar

• 30 'boudoir' biscuits. This could also be ladyfingers or whatever's available.

• 2 shots of espresso (we use decaf instant coffee, made very strong)

• 2 fluid ounces liquor of your choice. I've used hazelnut with some success. Sambuca is traditional. Godiva chocolate liqueur would be sinful. I've also skipped it when we had naught on hand.

• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, more or less.

Separate the eggs. Beat the yolks with 1 1/4 cup sugar until pale and thick. Fold in mascarpone until fully incorporated. In a separate bowl, whip egg whites until frothy, add 1 tablespoon sugar and beat until they hold a stiff peak. Add a spoonful of the mascarpone mixture and fold in, then fold the egg whites into the mascarpone mixture gently until fully incorporated. Place a layer of the cookies on the bottom of your chosen container. Mix the alcohol and espresso. I use a small syringe (sans needle) to evenly soak the biscuits with alcohol and espresso. Alternate layers of soaked cookies and cream mixture, ending with the cream. Put into the refrigerator and let stand at least 4 hours to overnight. Just before serving, sift cocoa over the top. If you do the cocoa earlier, it will dampen and not look nice.

Enjoy!

Lessons in Clafoutis

I have been bested by a French dessert. I have not written of my trials and tribulations clafoutis, but I have spent the summer trying various recipes and fruits and techniques, and after today I've decided that it's not me, it's clafoutis.

Clafoutis looks like a custard fruit dessert. It's generally a flour-milk-egg concoction, traditionally with cherries but certainly one can substitute other fruits. Which I have done in many variations. I've tried it with cherries, berries, plums and now peaches. And I don't like it one bit.

This is not the first time I've not liked a dessert, but each time is like a little death to me. The problem with clafoutis is that there's no contrast, and no surprise. It doesn't make the fruit better, it doesn't 'set it off', it just holds the fruit. The best way I can describe it is a soggy pancake - but it's not soggy. It's heavy. A fruit dessert shouldn't be heavy.

So, if you're thinking of making a dessert to impress, or something exotic for dessert, I highly recommend you not make clafoutis. It's very plain. Edible, but as we know - the rule of dessert is that it needs to be worth the calories. And after at least a dozen attempts, I can definitively say that clafoutis is not worth the calories. Sorry to dissapoint.

Desserts from France: Crepes with peach jam

If you're wondering why the headline says peach jam but the picture features something reddish/black, I'd like to introduce you to the black peach. As of now, it appears to only grow in my neighbor's yard, a situation I shall quickly remedy by planting every single pit I can get my hands on. Come 3 or 4 years from now, I'll be the queen of black peaches. Or someone will.

Anyhow, I had this wonderful peach jam that didn't quite fit in the jars. As you know, any 'leftover' sweets MUST BE EATEN IMMEDIATELY or the world will stop turning and everything on the Earth's crust will be swept off the mantle, leaving a big hunk of rock. It's such a small price to pay to save all of humanity, so I went ahead and planned my use.

One of the wonderful things the French have give us is crepes. Now, I'm going to be honest - American desserts as a rule are far superior to other country's desserts, taken on a whole. That's because we got the best of all the ethnic stuff and aren't trapped by our traditions. But, crepes make a wonderful dessert from France and are dead simple.

Here's the 'recipe' if something so simple can be called a recipe:

1 cup flour
1 cup milk (maybe plus a bit)
2 eggs
2 TB butter, melted
1/8 tsp salt
1 tablespoon sugar

(If you're not making dessert crepes, leave out the sugar and double the salt)

Mix it all together until is very pourable - about the consistency of kefir, if you are familiar with it. Pour a Tablespoon of oil into your frying pan then wipe it around with a paper towel. It should just have a sheen of oil, any more and your crepe will slide around the pan. Put it on a medium high heat, then add about 1/4 cup of batter, quickly rotating the pan to evenly coat the bottom with batter. If your crepe won't run, or comes out too thick, add a bit of milk until it works right.

Cook until the whole top has lost its gloss and you see bubble forming underneath. Turn it. I use a knife and my fingers, but you can use a good sharp spatula to turn it over. Let cook for about 10-15 seconds, then fold in half and half again and remove from the pan.

You need to be fast, crepes cook very quickly. The first one is usually a throwaway - it doesn't color correctly and you rarely get the batter right straight away. So if your first one is awful, that's how it's supposed to be.

The beautiful thing about crepes is that they don't soak up liquids, so they are great for something that clings, like a loose peach jam or similar.

Arrange your triangles to look nice, add whatever your topping is and you have a lovely, easy, not very filling dessert. And because a lot of people think it's hard to make crepes, you might impress someone.

Peaches like you've never seen before!

Please excuse the low quality of the photo. In real life, all these peaches (except the two halves of a regular 'yellow' peach I put in for reference) were the color of a black cherry.

I found them in my neighbor's yard (they don't live here and I have permission to harvest). I nearly ignored them because the fully ripe peaches were a grayish color with just a hint of rose underneath. I thought that our drought this year had caused some malfunction. But then I shook the tree and one peach hit the trunk on the way down, tearing the skin and revealing this amazing 'black peach' flesh underneath.

One tentative taste told me these really were ripe peaches, of a color I've never seen before.

As the tree is too tall (and I'm forbidden from climbing the ladder ever since the time I fell off it and whacked my head and caused much sleeplessness in the home due to needing observation for possible concussion) I had to shake the peaches down, which naturally caused a lot of bruising.

But what better way to use a windfall of these beautiful peaches than to make some peach jam? So, jam I did. Amazingly, these peaches must be absolutely packed with pectin and acid, because they practically jelled before I had a chance to cook them. The jam is the color of blackberry jam but smells and tastes like peach jam. It is truly luscious.

And I would have missed it if I had judged this book by it's cover. Just goes to show.

What do you do when you live in France and have fresh peach jam and a blog about dessert? That's right, you make crepes. That's coming up in the next post...stay tuned!