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.

Lemon Pound Cake

For yet another hallway dinner - this time with a theme of German-speaking countries - I settled on a lemon pound cake (Zitroenenkuchen, from Germany or Switzerland). Most of the recipes I found, however, used about 4-5 eggs, which do not go along with my baking ideals.

Therefore, I adapted an egg-free pound cake recipe I found on Veg Recipes of India, and soaked that in a lemon glaze/syrup. This recipe is amazingly easy and has such a soft, moist cake that is very pleasing to eat. After the cake was thoroughly soaked in the lemon syrup, I iced the top with a lime icing, just because I had half a lime laying around from making another dish.

The yellow color of this came comes mostly from butter. It has quite a hefty amount of butter (1/2 cup of melted butter, 200 g unmelted) which deterred me at first. Not finding many other options, however I gave it a try. If it wasn't so yellow, I may have had added a drop of food coloring, but it was unnecessary.

In addition to the lemon juice used in the syrup soaking into the cake, and a tiny bit of lemon juice in the batter, the zest of 2 lemons was mixed into the batter, adding to the overall fragrance of the cake.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 200 g butter
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2/3 cup (200 g) condensed milk
• 1/2 cup milk (I used soymilk)
• 2 lemons, zested and juiced
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1/4 lime
• 50 g icing sugar + some more 

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 180°C.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, and baking soda and set aside.
3. In a saucepan, melt the butter. Once melted, add in the condensed milk and whisk until homogeneous.
4. Warm the milk in a pan or in the microwave (about 30 seconds in the microwave were sufficient). Add to the butter and condensed milk mix.
5. Whisk in the sugar, lemon zest and 1 tbs of the lemon juice.
6. Add the sifted flour mix, and mix until homogeneous.
7. Bake for 30-50 mins (depending on the oven) or until a toothpick inserted in comes out dry.
8. While baking, mix the remaining lemon juice with about 50 of icing sugar. It should be more like a syrupy glaze rather than liquid. Add icing sugar as seen fit.
9. Using a skewer or toothpick, poke deep holes throughout the baked cake. The more holes the better, but do not break the cake.
10. Spoon or pour the lemon syrup glaze over the top of the cake so that it soaks into the holes.
11. Leave the cake in the pan for at least another 10 mins.
12. Mix some icing sugar with lime juice. The icing should be white-ish, and relatively thick while still being somewhat runny.
13. Ice cake as seen fit.