Whoever said “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” hasn’t met tiramisu.
The classic old-school Italian dessert is undergoing a major facelift, with innovative riffs popping up in bakeries worldwide. Forgoing the traditional espresso soak, new versions experiment with flavors such as ube, pandan and mango passion fruit.
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And on social media, it’s becoming trendy to convert a fridge drawer into a giant vessel for tiramisu. Last year, creator @desertislanddishes stuffed a fridge drawer full of Bailey’s tiramisu, amassing 6.4 million views on TikTok, and this past summer, @60secondstonapoli did the same but with matcha tiramisu. The TikTok video has 14.1 million views.
One pioneer of untraditional tiramisu in the United States is Cafe Two by Two, New York City’s first tiramisu cafe. It opened in September of last year and offers 18 varieties of tiramisu at a time. Over the summer, the cafe launched its Dubai tiramisu, made with chocolate-soaked ladyfingers, pistachio cream, chocolate, and shredded phyllo mixed with pistachio paste. And for fall, it recently added Earl Grey chestnut and Oreo to its lineup.
Other bakeries are putting their own spins on tiramisu, including Gong Dessert Shop, a pop-up bakery based in San Jose, California. Created by second-generation baker Andrew Hong last year, Gong Dessert Shop incorporates flavors from Hong’s Vietnamese and Chinese heritage.
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His pop-up primarily specializes in mooncakes, but when brainstorming a menu for festivals, Hong thought tiramisu would be the perfect addition.
“It is a hot product that seems like it’s been catching fire lately overseas, and I think even now in the U.S., I’ve noticed some places starting to pick it up as well,” he said. “It’s also familiar. For the most part, I feel like everyone knows what tiramisu is.”
Classic tiramisu features ladyfingers soaked in coffee and layered with mascarpone cream. But if one or more of the components are missing or substituted, is it still a tiramisu? That’s up to personal interpretation, Hong said.
Literally translating to “pick me up” in Italian, Hong thinks tiramisu’s definition can go two ways: “pick me up” as in the dessert contains caffeine or “pick me up” as in the dessert lightens the mood and makes the consumer happy. As long as the dessert has ladyfingers, mascarpone cream and is layered, he considers it a form of tiramisu.
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Hong soaks ladyfingers in pandan milk, Vietnamese coffee or Hong Kong milk tea for three unique spins on the dessert. But it’s not just the atypical tiramisu flavors that make his dessert special — he also lets the ladyfingers soak longer than traditional, giving an ultra-moist, tres leches quality to his dessert.
“What I hate the most is dry tiramisu. So for my tiramisus, I purposely soak the living heck out of it,” he said. “I like the added moisture, and also it adds a lot more flavor.”
Another bakery experimenting with nontraditional tiramisu is Baked Banhs in Santa Ana, California. Founded by cousins Melissa Yip and Christal Sin last year, the bakery is also inspired by their Vietnamese and Chinese heritage.
When Baked Banhs first opened, tiramisu was not on the menu. Instead the focus was cookies and milk buns. Tiramisu was introduced to be a less labor intensive version of Baked Banhs’ Basque cheesecakes, according to co-owner Edward Mai.
Baked Banhs has offered tiramisu in flavors such as Vietnamese coffee, ube, matcha, strawberry Calpico, blueberry calamansi, mango passion fruit, coconut lime, Thai tea and Bananas foster, all made from various soaks, infused mascarpone cream and other toppings.
“Our goal is to provide and share with more Asian flavors to our general community,” Mai said. “We want to provide (desserts) reminiscent of a homemade experience to our customers.”
And tiramisu isn’t just gaining traction in the dessert industry — it’s also growing in the coffee industry with the rise of tiramisu lattes. Slide Coffee in the Philippines is going viral for its lattes topped with squares of tiramisu in both espresso and matcha varieties. Sip House in Seattle, Washington, also offers the same tiramisu-topped lattes, as do some other cafes globally.
