From vending machine to Venice, twinkiemisu:

Food day at the office last month—Mexican. This month? Italian. After considering the multitude of options such as lasagna, hoagies, spaghetti and meatballs, ravioli, penne pasta and salad, I decided that I wanted to bring in tiramisu. As I looked through various recipes for easy tiramisu, I noticed a few anecdotes that kept popping up in recipe comments for an interesting substitution for the lady fingers—twinkies. OK, you have my attention.

Following the idea farther, I came across this recipe for twinkie-misu, involving nothing more than cool whip, instant vanilla pudding, vanilla extract, sugar, instant coffee, kahlua, twinkies, and cocoa powder.
I could handle that.



I made the vanilla pudding, added the vanilla extract, then stuck it in the fridge to thicken. After that, I busied myself carving up twinkies as instructed. I laid them in the pan, cream side up.



I heated up the kahlua, water, and instant coffee mixture, making the coffee a little stronger than normal. I added a few tablespoons of turbinado sugar, and drizzled the mixture over my twinkies.



Next, a layer of pudding.

I repeated the layering process, finishing with layer of cool whip and cocoa powder for presentation. I recomend you refrigerate overnight or stick in freezer for a few hours.



I had some extra twinkies, so I made a smaller pan for testing purposes, which I made presentation side down and stuck in the freezer. I had a subject already, as I was expecting Jeff over for our Monday run. I hoped that he believed I was actually baking when he walked into the apartment and found me surrounded by empty boxes and twinkie wrappers.
By the time we got back, the Twinkie-misu had set. I used tin foil to make sure it did not glue itself to the bread pan, and it came out fairly easily. We tried it, and I can say that this recipe is Nomerati tested and approved. The vanilla goes well with the twinkies and the flavors come together without overpowering eachother. I think the extract is necessary to add a little more flavor to the pudding. Who says twinkies can't be classy?



A last layer of cool whip and cocoa powder.