A Grand Dessert for Christmas Day
Any big holiday in your life deserves a grand ending with a special dessert. It doesn’t have to be troublesome to make one. This one can even be made ahead and frozen, like I plan to do this week, saving more time for fun next week. To thaw, I’ll pull it out of the freezer two days ahead and let it thaw and meld the flavors all at the same time. I’ll finish the top the day I plan to serve it and return it to the refrigerator.
Our dessert is a Spiced Pear and White Chocolate Tiramisu. In researching tiramisu as a dessert, I also found all the elements of a typical holiday. First, there is a little libation involved to make it taste special. Here we use both a good dry white wine and Poire Williams, a pear brandy. Both of these add a lot of taste to the dish, so don’t skip them if you have a mind to do so.
Second, there is a great big fight over who actually invented it. . Most accounts credit the recipe as being from Treviso, Italy. Some accounts claim it’s been around since the 1960’s and the chef named it Tiramisu, which means “pick me up” in Italian. Since classic Tiramisu is made with coffee, this makes sense. Other accounts claim an apprentice with the maiden name of tiramisu made the dish in the 1980’s and her head chef named it after her, because she was so clever. Regardless, the debate is interesting. Today, with so many desserts being called Tiramisu, it’s safe to say it has now come to describe a layered Italian dessert, the way Trifle describes an English layered dessert.