We miss you, tiramisu

Since we’ve consumed our body weight in gelato, we figured that we’d better move on to another item on the list, before none of our clothes fit anymore. While in Italy, we had the chance to try several different cakes and pastries. Although the pastries were out of this world, our reaction to cakes was a bit different. First, the Italian cakes tend to be less sweet than American cakes. This was a good thing. Next, the ones that we tried seemed to be much drier and spongier than what we were expecting.

We had tiramisu in both Italy and Croatia, so following is a comparison of the two:

Description	Italy	Croatia
Form	Square Cake	In a round container
Ingredients	Layers of creamy filling in between thin chocolate biscuit/spongey cake layers, with dusting of cocoa powder on top	Creamy filling heaped on top of sponge lady finger-like Croatian cookies, sprinkled with a generous amount of cocoa and espresso flavored powder.
Taste	Drier, chewier, with a strong coffee flavor	Almost like a light custard consistency, topped with a coffee finish.

Restaurant: Kavana

Croatian Tiramisu Rating: 4.88 stars

Restaurant: Rosa Salva, VE

We would be remiss not to give credit to Rosa Salva for having the most beautiful assortment of mini marzipan cakes we’ve ever seen, which look astonishingly like the real thing! The tradition of sculpting and painting marzipan dates back hundreds of years and was especially common in Renaissance Venice. 

Italian Tiramisu Rating: 4.75

Verdict: Although tiramisu is one of our favorite desserts back in the US, we found that we didn’t like the authentic Italian version as much. The drier texture of the cakes we tried in Italy tastes almost over-baked to us. I’m sure that is simply a cultural preference of what we are accustomed to.

A note to Croatia: Although your customer service needs a ton of work, we have to admit, we loved your tiramisu even more than the American version. Its delectable creaminess made our tastebuds sigh, even as our arteries clogged.