You Can Pick Me Up Anytime!

This cake will pick you up too! Why? Because it’s tiramisu, (which literally means ‘pick me up’) in cake form. Oooh, fancy! When Emily of Chocolate in Context, announced the theme for this round of Sugar High Friday was raw chocolate I had no idea what I would be making because I’d never used it before. This is a good thing though because it forced me to try something new. But it was also a problem because where I live there’s not a whole lot of places to find raw chocolate. Or chocolate. Or stores. Or people. There are cows though. Moooo. After much searching and a hint from a friendly cow, I found some cacao nibs. The next step was finding a recipe so naturally the first place I looked was Dorie’s book. Nuts! Nothing called for cacao nibs, but they were listed in the glossary where it said they could be used to replace chocolate chips. Interesting. Lots of Dorie recipes called for chocolate chips. I had lots to choose from but just to be fair, I scanned some of my other books and the internet to look for an alternative recipe, but my heart wasn’t in it. Dorie or die! And so I looked through Baking: From My Home to Yours for the umpteenth time and I came to rest at a recipe that could kill two birds with one stone. A while back I made alfajores as I was challenged by Marce of Pip in the City to do so and at the end of that post I said I was always up for a challenge if anyone had any other suggestions for me. Lis of La Mia Cucina said she wanted to see my take on tiramisu.

Well, here it is! It’s actually Dorie’s take on tiramisu by turning it into a cake, combined with my take on SHF by substituting cacao nibs for chocolate chips in between the layers and on top of the cake. Oh and it has Armagnac in it instead of kahlua. As you may have noticed, I’m hooked on Armagnac right now. Soon I’ll find a new flavour and use it in everything, but for now, it’s Armagnac. I was happy with how this cake turned out. I think it’s pretty and it only gets better with time! It has the elements of a classic tiramisu but it’s served as a cake instead of in a bowl which, in my opinion, makes it much more elegant. You can’t get a perfect slice of a traditional tiramisu, you just get a glob on a plate. Sure it looks nice in the bowl, but you can’t eat it without ruining it! That’s why a tiramisu cake is so much better. And in this case you also get the added bonus of cacao nibs, what’s not to love? I have a feeling cacao nibs will be making many more appearances here… Look out Armagnac, you’ve got competition!

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SHF + Sugar High Friday + Tiramisu + Cacao Nibs + Cake