Tiramisu

Photo capturing the outside of Cannelle, with its street-side sign and window-writing visible (2 Nov. 2025). Captured by John McWilliams.

"No Coffee, Just Tiramisu Please"

by John McWilliams

Out of all the drinks in the world, my least favorite is, without a doubt, coffee. No matter how much my friends drink it, or however many times a day I’m subjected to the phrase “I can’t survive without it,” I’ve never been able to bring myself to enjoy it. There’s one exception: my family’s homemade tiramisu. This dish has taught me that the best recipes aren't the ones that you copy, but the ones that you make uniquely your own.

As a seven or eight-year-old kid in my parents’ kitchen, I vividly remember the first time I ever had the classic Italian dessert. Those first three blasts of coffee, cocoa, and vanilla sweetness hit me like a truck. I never recovered. I begged my parents to make it all the time, whether it was for after school, for dessert, as a substitute for a birthday cake, or for essentially any occasion that I could make an excuse for. The simplicity of their recipe always stuck out to me; my mother always seemed to be able to make it so quickly, and with such ease. Before I knew it, I was making it with her, and then learning to make it by myself. Its taste stayed unchanged every time I had it, and I found a sense of tradition in that. For me, that was what made it so special and unique.

Photo of me, holding the tiramisu in its plastic wrap (2 Nov. 2025). Captured by John McWilliams.

Photo capturing Cannelle’s tiramisu in its box, fresh after being purchased (2 Nov. 2025). Captured by John McWilliams.

Roughly translated to “pick-me-up,” tiramisu is famous for being exactly what its name means—a sweet, rich, creamy Italian dessert that can revive anyone’s energy levels on the spot. Traditionally, it’s a six-ingredient dish, only requiring eggs, mascarpone, ladyfingers, cocoa powder, sugar, and of course, espresso (Andrade). It’s a deceptively simple recipe: you get the ingredient amounts and ratios right, and you have a pretty sweet treat; you mess up and go too heavy with something, and it becomes too sweet and resultantly tiring (Andrade). However, recent research has shown that substituting the mascarpone with Turkish lor cheese will not only result in an improved taste, but also in “low calorie, low cost, and greater nutritional-valued desserts” (Ozer).

Tiramisu’s recipe is somewhat simple, but its history on the other hand is wildly debated. The origin of tiramisu has several claims and yet not one consensus. One of the most well-known and most accredited “creators” is the late chef Roberto Linguanotto, who, according to The Washington Post, is said to have created tiramisu after he “accidentally dropped mascarpone in a bowl of eggs and sugar” (Andrade). He, along with his wife, Alba Campeol, added it to their restaurant's menu in Treviso, Italy, where it spread across the world and grew into the staple dessert we know today (Andrade). A slightly different story revolves around chef Linguanotto creating tiramisu by modifying the existing dessert sbatudin, a northeastern Italian dish which predates tiramisu. A third claim is that chef Linguanotto didn’t invent tiramisu at all, and was instead restaurant owner Norma Pielli in the town of Tolmezzo in 1959, a decade before Linguanotto’s claim (McNamee). There’s no clear answer to this discussion. The one consensus, however, is that tiramisu's taste is top notch.

That consensus was tested when I went to Cannelle on Washington Street in Ann Arbor. Having gone far too long without even a bite of this dish, the experience was somewhat jarring. The pastry’s dense, almost cake-like texture, coupled with the intense flavors and twelve-dollar price tag, was different in almost every way from the light, airy dish that I was used to. Granted, I still enjoyed it and ate the whole thing in minutes, but the experience reminded me that cultural foods don’t have to be carbon copies of each other. Rather, the uniqueness of each person’s take on a dish is what makes trying it so special and memorable.

Going to Cannelle and reflecting on my whole, lifelong tiramisu love affair made me ponder on what my own signature tiramisu would look like. Would it be a replica of what I’m used to—a carbon-copy of my parents' version? Maybe I’d enjoy the more flashy, restaurant-style kind I found in Ann Arbor? How could I make it represent both my culture and what’s unique about myself? I haven’t tried making tiramisu in years, so I’m not even close to those answers. However, when I figure it out, I know that the recipe will taste perfect, and only because it will be mine.

Works Cited

Andrade, Sofia. "Tiramisu is a Ubiquitous Dessert. We can thank chef Roberto Linguanotto." The Washington Post, 7 Aug. 2024. ProQuest, https://proxy.lib.umich.edu/login?

url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/tiramisu-is-ubiquitous-dessert-we-can-thank-chef/docview/3089691337/se-2. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.

McNamee, Gregory Lewis. “Tiramisu.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Oct. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/tiramisu. Accessed 12 Nov. 2025.

McWilliams, John. Photo capturing myself and the tiramisu. 2 Nov. 2025. Author’s personal collection.

McWilliams, John. Photo of Cannelle from street view. 2 Nov. 2025. Author’s personal collection.

McWilliams, John. Photo of Cannelle’s tiramisu after being purchased. 2 Nov. 2025. Author’s personal collection.

Ozer, Cagla. “The Usability of Lor Cheese in Some Dairy-Based Desserts of Turkish and International Cuisines.” Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, vol. 18, no. 6, 2020, pp. 560-71. Taylor & Francis Online, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15428052.2019.1692745#abstra ct. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.

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