I woke up with a terrible craving for tiramisu. Who has never experienced this kind of sudden urge? This one lived in me since the day before, like an irrational craving. Before bed, I had scrolled through my Instagram feed in the bluish glow of my phone screen. A strange sweet vision had suddenly appeared, snapping me out of the usual torpor. “New tiramisu recipe available for sale,” the author of the photo captioned. It was a black plastic tray, all that is most banal, from which overflowed an ocean of ecru-colored cream. Its surface was streaked with a chocolate coating, probably Nutella. Here and there someone had crisscrossed the half-dozen-square area of ​​Kinder Bueno, the way landmines are dropped on a calm sea. A rain of cocoa powder completed the landscape. A mixture of fascination and greed suddenly took hold of me. What idea to put snacks in a tiramisu: was it the work of a crazy pastry chef or that of a misunderstood genius?

By browsing from hashtags to photo suggestions, I discovered the extent of the phenomenon. From Instagram to Snapchat, via TikTok, social networks are invaded by these tiramisus of a new kind – apparently very far from the traditional recipe. Which come in an incredible number of variations and fillings, all drawn from the catalog of sweets that are usually found in the supermarket: Oreo, M

Basic markers

In “The tiramistreet: how our neighborhoods killed tiramisu”, a Bondy Blog article published in 2019, journalists Latifa Oulkhouir and Louisa Midiou are the first to try to decipher this trend. For them, these new kind of tiramisus would have appeared in the mid-2010s in neighborhood fast-food restaurants. If they have quickly become so popular, it is first of all because they are cheap. Then, because they can easily be customized – like kebabs, French tacos and wraps whose versatile recipes are subject to eternal reappropriation.

It’s almost 10 a.m. and I’m now torn by hunger, the lack of sugar, and the desire to fight. I get in touch on WhatsApp with CreaTira, a small company based in Essonne which presents itself on Instagram as being “pioneer of revisited tiramisu”. The photos are licked and the choice is varied. My heart leans towards their Kinder Bueno specialty (the initial object of my curiosity) and I also let myself be tempted by their Nutella-Speculoos recipe (“a classic”, announces the description). A few hours later, a delivery man gets out of his car and rings at my door to give me the precious package: the tasting can begin. At first glance, the dressage was very neat. The general appearance reminds me of an American ice cream, like Häagen-Dazs or Ben

Perpetual deviation

Like pizza or carbonara pasta, tiramisu falls into this category of typically Italian culinary specialties which, for lack of a controlled designation or registered trademark, are exposed to perpetual deviation. Because its recipe is simple and easy to grasp, because it does not require special cooking or extraordinary pastry tricks, tiramisu has become a dessert that is both universal and polymorphic, which never stops traveling. , to be brought up to date and to reinvent itself.

The first international championship dedicated to the specialty, which was held in Milan in October 2021, honored this particularity. At the end of the tests which pitted some twenty candidates from all over the world, a revisited tiramisu won. The work of French pastry chef Nabil Barina and his “Jardin du Taj Mahal”: a sphere covered in gold leaf, composed of lemongrass, caviar lemon, mango sorbet, coconut meringue and a cookie infused with green tea. Just days after the competition, tiramisu worshipers were mourning the passing of their hero, Ado Campeol, author of the original recipe, developed in the late 1960s. At the time, it only allowed for five ingredients: eggs, sugar, mascarpone, savoiardi (those famous Italian spoon biscuits) and coffee. Asked by the Guardian about the different current variations of tiramisu – which literally means “pull me up” in Old Venetian – Roberto Linguanotto, the co-inventor of the original recipe, quipped: “The basic tiramisu recipe is the result of a happy accident. Each country has its own conception of taste… As long as the tiramisus continue to lift people up, it’s O.K. for me. »