Cream cake and biscuit tortoni
Whole Foods has an especially delectable cake that I find completely irresistible. Fortunately for me, my wallet, and my waistline, I don’t live down the street from a Whole Foods, although I’m within striking distance if the desire is strong enough. Also fortunately, Whole Foods sells this cake by the piece, so there’s no excuse for me to buy a whole one if the spirit moves.
But my guess is that even that one little piece has about a thousand calories in it. So if I buy one I exercise the exquisite self-control of having a few bites a day till it’s gone. But those few bites—ambrosial!
What is this marvelous cake, you might ask? They call it almond cream cake—which is not tiramisu, I might add, although it partakes of a few of its qualities. This is a creamy moist thing topped with toasted almonds and just the right amount of cake and…well, it’s love, pure and simple.
It also is a familiar type of love. Something in the taste sparked a distant memory from my youth (all memories from my youth are pretty distant at this point, although no less intense for that). And then it came to me: biscuit tortoni! Ah!! Growing up in an Italian neighborhood in New York meant that Italian foods were standard, and in my childhood biscuit tortoni was as ubiquitous as (and far more interesting than) vanilla ice cream.
Spumoni was around too, but it was weird. Who wanted something with citron-y stuff in it? Ugh! But biscuit tortoni was a child’s dream: it came in a little accordion paper cupcake-like cup that you could pull apart into a big circle when you were finished, and with the wonderful toasted almond stuff on the top it was the sort of dessert that even a voracious sweet-lover like me would try to slow down to eat, the better to enjoy its delights.
Alas, I haven’t seen the stuff around anywhere any more. Or maybe that’s a good thing.
[NOTE: This claims to be a recipe for the tortoni, as does this. But I’m not so sure you should try it at home.]
No, no, NO, NO!
How can you do this to me, neo? Have you no decency? Have you at long last no sense of decency? Did you not read on my page how I am just up the hill from a Whole Foods?
Now I have to go down there. If only to test my resistance.
You are evil, neo. Pure evil.
P.S. I’ll get back to yé¸u on the calorie count.
From the recipe it doesn’t seem all that devastating from either the girth angle (using the word angle right next to a euphemism for fat – see what I did there?) or the preparation but I’m going to give it a shot. The hardest part may be getting those paper cups but, hey – a cook’s gotta do …
One thing I never got was the thing about slivered almonds. Maybe it’s a genetic thing like that paper only some people can taste but they do absolutely nada por mi.
Oh – when I’m not trying to break it your previwer works great! Greatly?
Nolanimrod: I didn’t study the recipe but the ones of my youth (and the cake) have toasted almonds that are ground or crumbled very fine. A sprinkling of intensely almond-flavored dust, a bit marzipan-ish. Not slivered!
Now I have to go down there. If only to test my resistance.
Discipline, vanderleun, discipline.
Now I have to go down there.
I see suspenders in your future.
Seeing Vanderleun lose his mind on this post was delightful…not as delightful as a piece of creme cake might be…but still.
I walked into Lancaster’s version of Whole Foods. It’s a locally owned palace of expensive yum…Stauffer’s of Kissel Hill and my eyes and nose were assaulted by the most beautiful coconut cream cakes I’ve ever seen. I guess it’s an Easter tradition in PA Dutch country to eat coconut cream pie or coconut cream cake. I won’t be having either. Sigh. Nobody in my family likes coconut but me.
Jewel: There’s no accounting for taste. I love coconut; how could anyone not like it? And yet there are many who don’t (including, apparently, your family).
And just now I happened to see a recipe for coconut cake for an Easter brunch, here. The photo was mouth-watering.
Those were some lovely recipes, Neo. I have a good one for Tres Leches cake, which I made after my husband berated me all day, believing it wouldn’t be as good as his favorite yellow cake with chocolate frosting. He tried it and said only one word. “Oh!” Revenge really is a dish best served cold!
Oh, and a belated Passover Blessings to you, Neo…I work in a Mennonite bakery. We do sell Challah bread. Some one forgot to tell the bakers that Challah bread isn’t eaten on Passover, because we made several loaves.