Consuming Consciousness

Tiramisú is my husband’s favorite dessert, and when he complained about the awful version of the dish available in the corporate cafeteria where he works, I decided to make one for him. Although it’s not a very difficult dish, and although the home-made version is far superior to that served in any but the finest Italian restaurants, I rarely indulge myself. Ounce for ounce, it has to be one of the highest calorie and highest fat desserts around. Nor is it any use to create lower-fat versions — they just don’t taste the same. Fortunately, my husband is a natural mesomorph and burns calories like a furnace, so he did for all of it except one small portion. That was enough to last me another five years, but my guess is, now that I’ve made it once, he will request it on regular rotation every couple of months.  Check out the recipe!

Note:  This recipe uses raw eggs.  A lot of bad restaurant Tiramisú features an egg-custard filling, so that they can avoid using the raw stuff.  In my opinion, though, it’s not worth eating.  So I don’t recommend making the dish if you live someplace where salmonella is a real risk.

There are dozens of great recipes for carrot cakes and breads, and they all have their fans. The one I choose usually depends on my mood at the moment. This cake was invented at a point when I was craving a rich and nutty, tender, glazed, citrus-flavored cake, suitable for either dessert or for munching with a cup of tea/coffee.

Check out the recipe!

It’s very quick to make if you have a food processor and a blender, which adds to its charm. If you have only a blender, you’ll have to grate the carrots by hand. Cut the recipe in half if you only want to make one loaf instead of two. Between the oil and the sunflower seeds, this is a full-fat, mega-calorie cake. My very lean partner, who needs to consume about 3000 calories a day just to maintain his weight, can eat it by the plateful. I stay on a restricted calorie diet, and so I confine myself to thin slices, parceled out carefully and enjoyed fully with a big cup of hot tea.

A heady mixture of tastes and spices, this rich cake and its creamy frosting scream luxury. The cardamom flavor is distinct but not overpowering, and it’s perfectly complemented by the cashews. The cake itself is soft and moist, chock full of carrots and chopped nuts. For the frosting, you make your own cashew buttercream mixture. Though I’ve used only cardamom and cinnamon as spices, you can easily experiment by adding clove, ground coriander, or nutmeg either to the frosting or the cake batter. The cake would also work as well with peanuts as with cashews.

This recipe was inspired by chokylit’s cupcakes, which are lovely but deadly little calorie and fat bombs. I replaced as many of the ingredients as possible with lower-fat and healthier alternatives, including swapping out butter for coconut oil and white flour for spelt flour. It’s by no means a low-calorie dessert, but at 335 calories per rich, filling slice, I think it’s now in the realm of possibility for folks looking to control their intake. (more…)