Tomatoes for dessert

I saw an intriguing recipe for a tomato-based dessert in the SF Chronicle the other day. I have to admit, I was a tad skeptical, but given that I conveniently had a surfeit of sungolds, some mascarpone cream and some cream cheese left over from my mango cheesecake experiment, I decided to give this recipe a try. However, I don't like making dessert just for myself, so I invited one of my college friends over to be a guinea pig. From salad to main dish to dessert, it ended up being an all-tomato affair. But back to this dessert.

I had to halve the recipe, since the original recipe made 10 servings.

The first thing I liked about this recipe is that I didn't have to modify the sugar content much. The custard part has a mere 1/6 cup of sugar, which I may have reduced slightly, but turned out to be not cloyingly sweet and nicely offset by the slight acidity of the lemon. As for the tomato compote part, this called for less than 1/2 cup of sugar, which after you add the lemon peels, raisins, and tomatoes, ended up being the right amount. If you have a sweet tooth, you might even add more.

The result was a pleasant surprise, to which none of the pictures I took can do justice:
The budino is an Italian steamed custard. It almost tastes like a very light, subtle cheesecake. This one had a light citrus flavor from the grated orange and lemon peels that the recipe called for. It tasted pretty good unaccompanied. However, the tart/sweet tomato compote enhanced and really brought out the latent citrus flavors. The tomato in dessert thing actually worked really well. The compote is essentially candied lemon peel w/ carmelized cherry tomatoes. The one modification I made was to use really good demerra brown sugar, which imparted a rich toffee-like taste. The slicing and roasting of tomatoes was a bit of a hassle, but without the roasting/carmelizing, the compote would not have tasted the same.

All in all, I was pleased with the results. My friend, who is not much of a dessert-eater, even seemed to like it enough to finish his portion.

I am now a tomato-dessert convert.