Revisited Rhubarb Tiramisu with Amaretti

In the Spring and early Summer, my absolute favorite fruit is rhubarb. Every year I try to come up with or find new rhubarb recipes. A friend of mine mentioned making a tiramisu once with amaretti: I then thought the sweetness of amaretti could match and complement pretty well the sourness and tartness of rhubarb. I mixed and matched those two ingredients, turned the rhubarb into a compote, and added a nice "lighter" mascarpone cream (read fewer egg yolks, more egg whites).

The revisited rhubarb tiramisu with amaretti turned out to taste even better than expected! It's crunchy (you can add as much amaretti as you want actually, I like my dessert with quite a lot of it), a bit sour and bitter, sweet, and fluffy! This makes for an easy Spring or Summer dessert :-) And you can use the leftover rhubarb compote for breakfast with granola and eat the leftover mascarpone with amaretti alone. Any combo is good!

Recipe for 8 Rhubarb Tiramisu portions

Mascarpone cream:
500 g mascarpone (room T)
6 eggs (4 yolks, 6 whites)
4 tbsp sugar

Rhubarb compote:
500 g rhubarb
50 g sugar

200 g Amaretti biscuits

Wash and chop up rhubarb into 2 cm pieces. Place in a sauce pan with sugar, let it sit for about 20 min. Heat up and bring to a boil on mid-high heat, then let simmer until the rhubarb is soft and undone. Put aside and let cool down.

Separate egg yolks and egg whites in two different bowls.
Beat up the egg whites, put aside.
Beat up the egg yolks with sugar. Add mascarpone, beat until smooth. Carefully incorporate the egg whites with a spatula.

Roughly crush most of the amaretti biscuits (save a few whole ones).

In 8 transparent glasses / cups, layer rhubarb compote, amaretti (don't be shy with the amaretti here, your dessert needs to be crunchy too), mascarpone, amaretti, compote, amaretti, mascarpone, amaretti. Top it with a whole amaretti biscuit for decoration. Prepare right before serving.

Enjoy!!! (you may want to bring some extra amaretti to the table, they match rhubarb and mascarpone really well)... (and you may want to prepare some extra dessert too as it is so good :-p )

Banoffee pie (banana+toffee+whipped cream+pecans cake)

My British friend and colleague told me that her sister's favorite birthday cake was Banoffee pie. Having never lived in the UK or read a British cookbook I asked her what that could be. Bananas, toffee (read gooey caramel), pecans, whipped cream... ok I was sold. She brought it to work one day and it tasted even better than it sounded.

I mixed and matched a few recipes I found online and made a banoffee pie for my guests last weekend. It actually requires no baking in the oven and no eggs like most cakes do: it's basically just chopping and mixing stuff, making caramel, layering and cooling down steps. You can make it ahead of time, I actually thought that the cake tasted even better half a day later :-)

Recipe for a banoffee pie (24 cm)

Base:
225 g digestive biscuits
100 g pecan nuts
125 g butter, melted

Toffee (caramel):
100 g butter
100 g sugar
400 g unsweetened condensed milk

Topping:
3-4 ripe bananas
3 dl whipping cream
a few pecan nuts

*Pre-work suggestion: toast/roast your pecan nuts in a pan or in the oven before using them, they'll be more crunchy and the flavor is great.

Crush to crumbs the digestive biscuits in a bowl. Chop up the pecan nuts and add to the crushed biscuits. Add melted butter, mix and then transfer to a 24 cm spring form. Press the biscuits down with your hand or with a spoon and create a small edge too (so that the toffee does not flow out). Put the spring form with the biscuit base in the freezer.

In a pan, melt butter and sugar while stirring. When the sugar has dissolved in the butter, add the condensed milk. Bring to a boil (on medium heat) while stirring continuously. The toffee will thicken and darken and smell of caramel. When it has thickened, take it off the fire and let it cool down a bit. Spread the toffee on the frozen biscuit base and then refrigerate for 30 min or so.

Slice the bananas. Whip the cream. Place the bananas tightly in a circular fashion on the toffee base. Spread the whipped cream on top and decorate with pecan nuts. Refrigerate until serving.