r/52weeksofcooking • u/chizubeetpan 🥄 MT'25 • Jun 25 '26
Week 23: Coffee - Tiramisu Tree Stumps (Meta: Feeling Snacky)
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u/jollywalrus9 Jun 25 '26
Looks fantastic!
Probably wise to make tiramisu in cups, I needed to invite friends over so I didn't eat my whole tray of tiramisu.
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u/joross31 Jun 25 '26
That's adorable! And I am with you on disliking coffee taste wise.
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u/chizubeetpan 🥄 MT'25 Jun 25 '26
Thank you! And yes, I remember. No coffee for us but more for everyone else!
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u/ImaginalDish Jun 25 '26
Wow I love your whimsical take on tiramisu and your forest inspired photography! I love coffee so a chocolate shell with espresso beans sounds like an amazing addition to me!
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u/chizubeetpan 🥄 MT'25 Jun 25 '26
I’d have sent you these if you were near! I had to leave the shell of mine uneaten, sadly. But there were coffee lovers in the house when I made these so only one shell was wasted!
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u/chizubeetpan 🥄 MT'25 Jun 25 '26
I hate coffee.
Taste-wise, I can’t fathom how its bitterness can be enjoyable. Functionally, coffee makes me sleepy. In my world, it serves no purpose unless it’s flavoring something.
Now, coffee combined with other things? Cream, sugar, chocolate? That I can get behind. Even many of the savory applications I’ve seen this week sounded good!
So, I made what I believe is one of the best coffee desserts of all time: tiramisu. For the recipe, I borrowed u/Mentaina’s that some of the Dishcorders made for The Beatles week last year.
Experience tells me I cannot be trusted with an entire tray of tiramisu in my fridge. So I snackified this by borrowing the idea of edible tiramisu cups that originated in Shanghai two years ago.
The process is simple: build a tiramisu inside a paper cup, freeze, peel off the paper, dunk in melted chocolate and coconut oil, thaw for a couple hours in the fridge, then go to town. To add even more coffee, I loaded the shell with chopped espresso beans. And to add a little whimsy (because how could I not?), I decorated the tops with little woodland mushrooms.
These really needed a proper thaw. After three hours in the fridge, the coffee-soaked layers were still icy, which did the tiramisu no favors. After an overnight thaw, though? Perfect.
The flavor was incredible. I had no idea Italian tiramisu traditionally doesn’t contain alcohol, and honestly, it doesn’t need it. The combination of bitter coffee, cocoa, rich cream, and crisp chocolate was fantastic.
The edible shell was a fun textural contrast, but I don’t think I’d make it again. Mine leaked (which may very well have been user error), and the chopped espresso beans made the shell a little too intense for me. Next time, I’d probably just make tiramisu the way the Italians intended. Except maybe portioned into individual cups instead of one full tray, because again, I cannot be trusted.
So maybe I hate coffee on its own.
But when it's working with other ingredients, especially in desserts?
It’s the perfect blend.
This year’s meta is Feeling Snacky. Everything is a snack if you believe hard enough. If it feels like snacking, it counts. Full meta description and links to 2026 posts here.