Durian Tiramisu

June 24, 2015

One day, my uncle bought a lot of durian pieces. My cousin being in another city, there was no way the two of us would finish them as is. Personally, I don't find durian particularly bad, just that they are pretty rich and creamy, and I can't eat too much in one go.

Then my uncle asked me if I could make a tiramisu out of it. Having never heard of the concept, I looked it up and found a few recipes. Some replaced the usual mascarpone (or ricotta in my version) with the durian. Others just added it in. Since my uncle had already bought a tub of mascarpone, I added the mashed durian flesh in for flavor and extra creaminess.

 

Being in China, I was way out of my natural environment, and a lot of ingredients I usually find usually were unavailable. Therefore, for the base, I made a vegan pound cake that I flavored with lemon in an effort to cut through the richness of the durian and mascarpone. I made the cake in a square cake pan, then cut it so that the cake retained its shape but each piece was half as thick. The first half was set back in the pan and moistened with Darjeeling tea before being covered in a layer of durian cream. I then repeated the layering with the 2nd half of cake.

Even in the tiramisu, the durian was pretty strong, but that might have been because I put a lot to try and finish it.

Since I didn't feel like that powdered chocolate would work well on top of lemon and durian, I hunted for another option. My aunt had given me some powdered hibiscus extract to give to my uncle, and after a quick taste test, it seemed to work fine as it also had a hint of tartness.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 1 pound cake (flavored as desired) -- see one of the previous recipes
• 200 mL whipping cream
• 200 g durian flesh
• 150 g mascarpone
• tea of choice

  Procedure

1. Bake (or buy) and slice a pound cake.
2. Whip the whipping cream into mid-stiff peaks. No need to add sugar.
3. Mash the durian flesh until creamy. Mix with the mascarpone.
4. Fold into the whipped cream.
5. Layer a pan, small ramekins, or other container with a layer of sliced pound cake. Soak in some tea.
6. Add a layer of durian cream.
7. Repeat until all the cake and/or cream is used up, finishing with a cream layer.
8. Dust some powdered hibiscus extract or other decorative goods.
9. Refrigerate min. 4 hours, but preferably overnight.

Small Apple Tarts

 

Whew, I got a lot of backlog to catch up on on this blog! For the past two months, I was on a trip to China. The internet there is fairly restricted, and all Google-related sites -- Blogger included -- were out of my reach. Therefore, everything I baked had to stay on my camera or laptop for later blogging.

June 6th, 2015

A couple of days after my arrival in China, my aunt who lives there told me to eat the four apples that were in the fruit basket. Not really wanting to eat them plain, and itching to attempt my very first baking in such a hot climate, I settled with small apple tarts.

I could not easily find the material I needed, so I settled with making a shortcrust dough and cutting it into circles with the edge of a rice bowl. Then I was going to just lay the apple slices on top in a spirally pattern, until I realized that the last apple was more than half bad already. I had to improvise.

Therefore I laid the whole slices with the wider curve facing out, then shredded the remaining apple into small strands, which I dumped somewhat randomly in the middle.

General apple tart tutorial can be found at this link!