Tuesday, July 21, 2009

From vending machine to Venice, twinkiemisu:





Food day at the office last month—Mexican. This month? Italian. After considering the multitude of options such as lasagna, hoagies, spaghetti and meatballs, ravioli, penne pasta and salad, I decided that I wanted to bring in tiramisu. As I looked through various recipes for easy tiramisu, I noticed a few anecdotes that kept popping up in recipe comments for an interesting substitution for the lady fingers—twinkies. OK, you have my attention.

Following the idea farther, I came across this recipe for twinkie-misu, involving nothing more than cool whip, instant vanilla pudding, vanilla extract, sugar, instant coffee, kahlua, twinkies, and cocoa powder.
I could handle that.



I made the vanilla pudding, added the vanilla extract, then stuck it in the fridge to thicken. After that, I busied myself carving up twinkies as instructed. I laid them in the pan, cream side up.



I heated up the kahlua, water, and instant coffee mixture, making the coffee a little stronger than normal. I added a few tablespoons of turbinado sugar, and drizzled the mixture over my twinkies.



Next, a layer of pudding.

I repeated the layering process, finishing with layer of cool whip and cocoa powder for presentation. I recomend you refrigerate overnight or stick in freezer for a few hours.



I had some extra twinkies, so I made a smaller pan for testing purposes, which I made presentation side down and stuck in the freezer. I had a subject already, as I was expecting Jeff over for our Monday run. I hoped that he believed I was actually baking when he walked into the apartment and found me surrounded by empty boxes and twinkie wrappers.
By the time we got back, the Twinkie-misu had set. I used tin foil to make sure it did not glue itself to the bread pan, and it came out fairly easily. We tried it, and I can say that this recipe is Nomerati tested and approved. The vanilla goes well with the twinkies and the flavors come together without overpowering eachother. I think the extract is necessary to add a little more flavor to the pudding. Who says twinkies can't be classy?



A last layer of cool whip and cocoa powder.




3 comments:

  1. If your goal was to get my stomach grumbling and my mouth salivating, you succeeded. You sadist. I think we might have a twinkie in the office vending machine...

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  2. This Monday run thing has worked out really well. I only worry about the sad day when we have to finish it without the benefit of baked (or kinda-baked) goods!

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  3. I made 2 versions of something like this when I was about 12 in school. 1st one was cool whip, twinkies, vanilla pudding and sweetened strawberries. The second was Bananas, with cool whip, banana pudding. They were both great. A girl in my class made hers with peaches and that was my favorite. This version here looks delicious. Even I can make this and I can't boil water!

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I try to be honest, fair and keep a good sense of humor in my posts--I would appreciate if you follow the same policy with your comments.