Pumpkin-Maple Tiramisu

This dish graced our Thanksgiving table a few years ago in its original form as Epicurious’ Super-Simple Pumpkin Tiramisu. Man, those Epi people don’t lie. Super-simple, indeed. I’ve started doing time trials on the making of this tiramisu, and on the last round, from the time I placed my stand mixer on the counter until the time I was done dusting the top with cinnamon-confectioners’ sugar, it was 23 minutes. Twenty-three minutes. For this Thanksgiving, I’ll be making tiramisu on Wednesday morning while my coffee brews on the stove top. My money is on the tiramisu being done first.

I’ve modified the original Super-Simple recipe, as it called for rum and crushed amaretto cookies,which is all well and good, except that I found the rum too boozy and the amaretto cookies, well, they added crunch. And I don’t like crunch in tiramisu. In place of the rum, there is a mixture of maple syrup and just a bit of apple cider, and the topping is the aforementioned cinnamon-confectioners’ sugar – sifted, of course, to avoid lumps, which wouldn’t crunch, but I’m all about the smooth tiramisu texture here.

Just because a holiday dessert land speed record could be set in the making of this dish does not mean that it is done after those 18 to 23 minutes of prep. You do want to let this set up in the refrigerator overnight, which is why I’ve scheduled it into my Wednesday morning coffee routine and not my Thanksgiving Day coffee routine. It has the added benefit of being lighter and more refreshing than your typical pie offering, which is a nice feature if you happen to gorge yourself on starchy sides like someone who is typing this might do.

Estimated cost for one tiramisu: $14.76, or $1.85 for each of 8 hefty servings. The cream costs $2.99 for 2 cups. The sugar costs 12-cents. The pumpkin puree is either $1.50 or so for fresh or 99-cents (it’s pumpkin puree sale time, after all!) for canned. The cream cheese is also on sale. I got mine for $1.00/package, but to be fair, I’ll call it $2.00 as it’s more frequently sold in that price range. The cinnamon for the entire dish is 45-cents. The allspice and nutmeg we’ll call 10-cents together. The maple syrup costs around 60-cents per tablespoon, so that’s not so cheap, but well worth it as it is a holiday, gosh darn it – $4.80. The apple cider costs $2.99 for 8 cups, so those 2 tablespoons cost us around 5-cents. The ladyfingers cost $3.49 for a package of 36, figuring that we used 28 (to stay on the high end of things around here), that’s $2.71. The confectioners’ sugar costs 3-cents as it, too, is on sale right now for $1.00 for 15 (1/4-cup) servings. Okay, even if it weren’t on sale, it’s something like 4-cents.

Dinner tonight: Mutant Rooster, Leek and Carrot Pie. Estimated cost for two: $2.16. For real. We’re still eating that giant Mutant Rooster that JR killed a couple of weeks ago. Well, okay, we froze half of it, and that’s what we’re eating now. But when your chicken is mutant, one leftover thigh from last night’s Chicken with Leeks and Carrots in White Wine Sauce is enough to stock an entire pot pie. This, I do not say in jest. So I will repeat it. I got enough meat from the one remaining thigh to make a six-serving pie. JR also got lunch from the remaining breast meat, leeks, and carrots. Nine meals from half of a chicken. See what I’m saying? Mutant. So we’ll call the chicken for tonight’s dinner $2.19 – the cost of the chick when it arrived on our coop stoop. The leeks were from the garden, but if you purchased them for last night’s dinner, let’s call that $2.49 – seeing as that’s what I saw a bunch of three leeks commanding at my local grocery store this morning. The carrots cost 80-cents per pound, and I used just one pound. The white wine was leftover, but we’ll call it $1.67 as it was only about a cup and we don’t spend more than five bucks per bottle on wine for cooking, as we are parsimonious, aren’t we? The chicken stock was half of a container that cost $1.99 (for 4 cups). We’ll tally up leeks, carrots, white wine, and chicken stock and then divide by two (as we are using leftovers here). That’s $2.98. The crust is half of the dough made last weekend for a very similar chicken pot pie purpose, and that costs us $1.30. So the pie costs $6.47, we’re going to get 6 servings out of it – rather easily, might I add – so that runs us $1.08 per serving. And then we’ll be sick of chicken that strongly resembles turkey in flavor (and size), so we’ll use our savings to buy some sort of red meat and get a fix of that before the holiday.