Sure, dessert spreads are delicious on bread, but they can also be used for a variety of cooking applications. We challenged Andrea Mut, owner of Andrea’s Gerrard St. Bakery in Toronto, to tweak classic baked goods using the same trendy spreads.
Speculoos frangipane cherry tart: Frangipane tarts are often filled with ground almonds – Mut used Speculoos Cookie Butter from Europe instead. To balance out the cookie butter’s intense sweetness, she reduced the sugar in her usual recipe. She used cherries, but says it would also be great with apples or pears.
Fluffernutter Nanaimo bars: This is a mash-up of all-American Fluffernutter (peanut butter plus Marshmallow Fluff) and all-Canadian Nanaimo bars. Mut used white-chocolate peanut butter from Peanut Butter & Co. to replace some of the butter in a traditional Nanaimo bar recipe, then added an extra layer on top: Marshmallow Fluff, which she’s toasted with a blowtorch.
Nutella tiramisu: This is a classic tiramisu with Nutella folded into the custard, with extra Nutella drizzled in between the layers of custard and cookie. Nutella doesn’t heat up well, so to get it to a drizzling consistency Mut recommends mixing it with heated cream, hot espresso or booze: Frangelico liqueur plays off Nutella’s hazelnut flavours nicely.
Maple walnut rugelach: The dough for this traditional Jewish dessert is usually made with cream cheese. Here, Mut spread maple butter across the dough before sprinkling it with crushed walnuts then rolling it into its distinctive triangle. As a finish, she heated some maple butter and drizzled it over the top.