The Mess-Free Egg Swap For Decadent, Velvety Tiramisu

A decadent Italian dessert, Tiramisu is typically made of tender cookies, ladyfingers, or sponge cakes that are soaked in a sugar syrup, usually infused with some kind of liqueur like Grand Manier or marsala, and layered with a creamy custard. The whole thing is refrigerated for hours to let the flavors and ingredients blend.

The custard for tiramisu is usually made from scratch, per Food Network, which involves lots of stirring and cooking or often uses uncooked eggs, as in one recipe from Nigella Lawson's website, which can be a concern for some people. If you don't want to use eggs, which are messy anyway, what can you do? A tub of plain Cool Whip just isn't going to cut it if you want a really luscious and delicious dessert.

There is a mess-free egg swap for decadent, velvety tiramisu. And it doesn't involve using pasteurized eggs or even prepackaged custard. This miracle ingredient is probably in your pantry already, and if you don't have it, it's so easy to find.

The answer is to use pudding mix instead of eggs. The eggs in the tiramisu custard are there to thicken the mixture. As it cooks, the protein in the eggs coagulates, per Eggs.ca, and forms a web that holds water. In fact, they can capture up to four times their weight in liquid. That's why egg-based sauces thicken.

Pudding mix, according to Kraft Foods, is made from sugar cornstarch, oil, flavoring, and xanthan gum. The cornstarch replaces the egg in this mixture, and when the sauce reaches 95 degrees Fahrenheit, per the Exploratorium, the starch molecules start to separate and form webs that hold liquid, just like the protein in eggs. 

You can use pudding mix that needs to be cooked, or instant pudding mix, which uses modified cornstarch that thickens in cold water, according to Bob's Red Mill. So on a hot summer day, you can make tiramisu without using any heat at all! Try out a recipe for easy tiramisu from Kraft, which uses pudding mix and nilla wafers, or one from Southern Living for lemon tiramisu which uses a lemon-flavored pudding mix.

To substitute pudding mix for eggs in a tiramisu recipe, make the pudding mix as directed on the package and beat it into mascarpone cheese, per Insider. Or, according to Shugary Sweets, you can combine heavy cream with instant pudding mix and vanilla and beat until stiff, for a great pastry cream substitute.

Whether you choose to use eggs or pudding mix in your tiramisu, you should make one soon. This is an excellent dessert for entertaining since it must be made ahead of time. The ladyfingers absorb some of the custard and coffee as the dessert sits in the fridge, which thickens the whole thing so it can be scooped out of the dish or sliced nicely. It should be refrigerated for 6 to 8 hours and can be made up to two days ahead, according to Food & Wine.

If you're out of eggs and pudding mix, you can try Buca di Beppo's tiramisu, from the famous restaurant, which actually calls for making the ladyfingers that are the basis for the dessert (though a mascarpone filling with no eggs is used for the rich custard). Similarly, mango rum tiramisu is a sweet and fresh take on the classic recipe and also uses no eggs at all.