Mars and Venus, Tiramisu and Fondant

So we are finishing brunch at this cafe on the weekend, after a bone crunchingly exhausting unpacking weekend. We just about have time for dessert before returning to the chaotic sea of cartons that is currently our home. We fleetingly contemplate experimenting with the house special (raspberry cheesecake in french), we decide on the tiramisu just as quickly.

The tiramisu appears and disappears in less than the time it takes to say "a flash". "God bless her" I say.

"Who?" P asks distractedly, scooping the last bit of cream off the plate

"The woman who invented tiramisu"

"What makes you think it was a woman?"

"It has to be a woman. Its creamy, sloppy, loaded with calories. Its not chocolate fondant, its comfort food"

"And chocolate fondant isn't?"

" Well it has to be more technical to achieve just the right amount of gooiness in the centre. Classic example of overengineering a cake. Has to be a man"

"It should be the other way around. By the women's lib definition of men at least.." P smirks.

He was right. This needed more research. I decided to google it.

I hit jackpot. Researcher Pietro Mascioni traces the dessert back to the 1960's, to a town in Tuscany called Treviso.

“Born recently, less than two decades ago, in the city of Treviso, is a dessert called Tiramesu which was made for the first time in a restaurant, Alle Beccherie, by a pastry chef called Loly Linguanotto.”

“The story is very credible,” said Mascioni, who traveled to Treviso to talk to the Campeols last fall. There, matriarch Alba Campeol told Mascioni that she got the idea for the dessert after the birth of one of her children. She was very weak in bed and her mother-in-law brought her a zabaglione, spiked with coffee to give her energy"

Hah. Point one proven. Now to prove point number two.

This proves to be more difficult however. Apparently fondant means different things to different people in the land of chocolate. However I persevere, and I come upon the following..

"The U.S.-based chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten claims to have invented molten chocolate cake in New York City in 1987. According to Vongerichten, he pulled a chocolate sponge cake from the oven before it was done and found that the center was still runny, but was warm and had both a good taste and a good texture."


Not overengineering but premature... i mean... jumping the gun. Another classic male trait.

Elementary really. I rest my case.