My husband will turn down dessert on a regular basis. At our children’s birthday parties, he’s the one that won’t have a piece of the three-tier chocolate cake. I really don’t comprehend this. He claims he doesn’t like cake much, especially the layered and iced ones. Now, how does one celebrate a birthday without a cake or cupcakes? Would I bake a cake anyway, so he could blow out the candles? No. I decided to look for desserts he does like – Crème caramel and Tiramisu came to mind.
I had recently come across a different version of Tiramsu in the Tibits cookbook. Adding Coconut and Pineapple, seemed like an interesting take on a classic Italian desert. Normally, Tiramisu is prepared in a shallow dish, allowing you to get cut pieces out easily, even with all the creamy mascarpone. But, because it was his birthday, I wanted the non-cake to look more like a cake, or something equally celebratory – so I doubled the recipe and assembled it in my trifle dish. Beautiful to look at, but not very easy to serve. That didn’t stop my dear husband though to successfully blow out his candles and dig into his birthday dessert. He had a second helping and had more the next day. I call that a success. Ingredients Instructions Notes This is a rough translation from a metric German recipe - this recipe is pretty forgiving, so feel free to adapt to your liking. I doubled the recipe and added more coconut milk than the recipe calls for.
Next time I would chop my pineapple very fine to create a nice smooth layer, rather than large chunks of fruit - it would look nicer and probably serve prettier.
