Avocado Tiramisu Cake: Japan’s newest must-try dessert

Sell-out cake from popular Japanese cafe chain presents a new frontier for avocado.

We know how great avocado is in salads, sandwiches and especially on toast, but have you ever thought to have it as a dessert? We certainly hadn’t, so when we heard that local sweets chain Café comme ça was selling an Avocado Tiramisu Cake, we immediately knew we had to pay them a visit.

Unusual cakes like these tend to be incredibly popular, so we called ahead to reserve a slice as soon as they were released on 18 March. When we arrived to pick it up at 3 in the afternoon, we were glad we’d thought ahead, because all stocks of the cake had already sold out.

After returning to the office with our prized possession, we carefully took it out of its box and placed it delicately on a plate. The cake was far more beautiful than we’d expected, with chunks of avocado carefully splayed on top, interspersed with whipped cream.

Only the freshest, highest quality avocados are used in this dessert, giving the slice a vibrant pop of green and gold colour. It really did seem odd to be looking at a cake with an avocado topping, but that’s when we remembered that avocado isn’t really a vegetable–it’s a fruit, and that made us even more curious to find out what this sweet combination would taste like.

▼ All fruits are cut fresh on the day of sale.

The cake pairs avocado with two more commonly known fruits: mango and banana. After piling a heap of it all onto a dessert fork, it started to resemble a fruit salad…only we’d never eaten these three together in one mouthful before.

Keeping one eye on the seemingly out-of-place avocado the whole time, we lifted the fork to deliver its contents to our eager taste buds. We really weren’t sure what to expect from this, but as soon as we’d had one mouthful, we were instantly blown away. All the different components melded into one, deliciously melting on the tongue as if it were a fruit-flavoured cream.

▼ As it turns out, avocado and cream is a match made in heaven

Part of the reason why the cream is so flavourful is because it sits upon the entire length of the slice, allowing you to taste the combination of cream, avocados and fruit on one end, cream and mascarpone in the middle, and cream and avocado at the other end. This provides you with a variety of flavour combinations to keep your taste buds entertained with every bite.

Of course, we can’t forget about the tiramisu element, which sang out strong through the bittersweet espresso sauce as it casually oozed its way through the middle section. Even this was a great pairing for the creamy avocado, and despite being rich and creamy, we were surprised to find the whole cake left us feeling light instead of heavy, as if we could have another serving straight away.

To be honest, this was an insanely delicious cake, with just the right amount of bananas, mangoes, avocado, espresso, mascarpone and cream to provide an exquisite balance of flavours. The smooth texture and high fat content of the avocado makes it surprisingly well-suited to creamy desserts, and we’d recommend this cake to avocado lovers without question.

If your taste buds are keen to explore this new frontier for avocados, the Avocado Tiramisu Cake retails for 950 yen (US$8.72) is currently on sale at Café comme ça outlets for a limited time from 18 March to 14 April. For those wanting a simpler avocado dessert to make at home, however, there’s always this tomato, avocado and ice-cream suggestion from Häagen-Dazs Japan.

Related: Café comme ça store list
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