Tiramisu

Although it’s hard to imagine an Italian dessert menu without tiramisu, the punchy caffeinated dessert (which roughly translates from Italian as 'pick me up') was only invented in the 1970s. It’s made up of coffee-soaked ladyfingers (sponge fingers) layered with sweet mascarpone and dusted with a healthy amount of cocoa powder. Creamy layers of whipped mascarpone cradle coffee-soaked ladyfingers in this modern Italian dessert, which has become a sweet mainstay around the globe. It's no wonder. And, according to lore, it was created by accident.

As usual, there are multiple origin stories, but the most widely accepted is that it was concocted by Ado Campeol, who owned Le Beccherie restaurant in Treviso, northeastern Italy. Campeol, who passed away at the end of 2021, was whipping up some vanilla ice cream when he accidentally dropped some mascarpone cheese into a mix of eggs and sugar. Campeol and his wife added espresso-soaked ladyfingers to the concoction and the tiramisu was born. Pictured is a tiramisu at Le Beccherie. Whatever the truth behind the creamy dessert, it's earned well-deserved pride of place on menus from Umbria to Ulaanbaatar.

Country: Italy