Tiramisu {grain-free}

I've been making the classic version of tiramisu for years and I've always wanted to share how to modify it with alternate ingredients. So here's my go-to tiramisu recipe with grain-free and dairy-free options.

There are few parts to this recipe: The lady fingers, cream layers, cocoa powder, and the espresso.

The only baking involved here is making the lady fingers. which can be a soft or hard cookie. Both kind will soften when adding the other ingredients so it doesn't really matter which kind you use. For my lady fingers recipe below, I use my vanilla cupcake recipe and two silicon cookie molds, but any yellow cake recipes or yellow cupcake recipe will work here. My lady fingers are the soft kind.

For the cream layers, traditionally I use 8 ounces of chilled heavy whipping cream and 8 ounces of mascarpone cheese. You can use this combination, or for a dairy-free version use 2 cups of whipped coconut cream. I've also made it with just whipped cream (as shown in the photos below). If you're using coconut cream you'll want to double the recipe for whipped cream that I added below.

If you don't have espresso or don't want to use it you can substitute with a strong brewed coffee or instant coffee. I use a decaffeinated freeze-dried coffee and add hot water to get the coffee liquid I need. You can also mix in some coffee liqueur or rum, but I leave mine alcohol-free.

If you'd like to remove the cocoa powder, you can substitute with ground cinnamon or a mixture of spices and cinnamon.