This spring, as I was doom-scrolling on my phone at 3 AM, I discovered an Instagram Reel from the account @ucla.tiramisu.guy. Expecting the typical slop I have accidentally trained my algorithm to give me, @ucla.tiramisu.guy was different. A student at the University of California, Los Angeles, he was amassing a following by attempting to make tiramisu with non-tiramisu ingredients throughout his dining hall, using things like cheesecake and muffins to create the iconic Italian dessert.
As a baker myself, I knew I could rise to the challenge.
Every Friday, I got dinner with the same two friends, so I sent them the account with a zealous “guys i think we should do this” text. There was one issue, though.
One of those friends was vegan. Unlike my Instagram inspiration, most of my options were immediately off the table. The Daily Kneads dessert bar? Not possible. Cocoa powder? Not available.
We had to get creative.
Luckily, there are always vegan desserts in the dining hall, even if not at the dessert bar. At the vegan station upstairs, Verdant and Vegan, they typically have some variation of cakey dessert: commonly cupcakes, though sometimes various bars or brownies.
Whence came the “lady finger” part of the tiramisu. That day, they served chocolate vegan cupcakes—not the traditional lady finger by any means, but we knew the chocolate would pair well with the coffee and whatever concoction we created for the cream filling.
Speaking of the cream filling, what were we to do without mascarpone?
After a brief panic and various appeals of my friend saying, “It’s okay if it’s not vegan. I can just help make it,” the idea struck me.
Our pizza and sandwich station, Firin’ Up, had vegan cream cheese. As long as it was whipped and sweetened, it could play a crude replacement for the mascarpone and egg filling. I grabbed a bowl, filled it with a giant glob of honey from the coffee and tea station, then covered it with equally unreasonably-sized scoops of the vegan cream cheese. While getting the honey, we also got a mug of hot coffee to dip our “lady fingers” into.
The last thing was the cocoa powder, which, to our knowledge, is not available at any spot in the dining center. However, we took a page out of @ucla.tiramisu.guy’s book. In his videos, he crushes up Oreos in order to get a similarly chocolatey powder. As Oreo bits are available every Friday for Daily Knead’s ice cream bar, we were golden.
Our table admittedly looked crazy. A plate of cupcakes, a bowl of cream cheese and honey, a bowl of crushed Oreos, and a cup of coffee. Any onlooker would’ve had deep concerns for our dining preferences.
Despite the chaos, assembly was the easy part.
Step 1. Scrape frosting off the cupcakes, then slice them into thirds latitudinally. The cupcakes may be very crumbly. It is best that you ignore this as much as you can.
Step 2. Dip the cupcake pucks into coffee, then layer at the bottom of your bowl. Do not use your hands. You are not Thetis dipping the prophesied Achilles into the River Styx. Your cupcake will immediately disintegrate into the coffee, and you will have to fish it out with a fork. Not recommended.
Step 3. Beat together the vegan cream cheese and honey with the frosting from the cupcakes. The consistency should be smooth and thin enough to spread on top of the soggy cupcakes.
Step 4. Repeat steps 1-3 until you have the desired number of layers.
Step 5. Using the bottom of a glass, crush the already crushed Oreos into a finer powder, then sprinkle on top.
In the end, you will have something that is vaguely reminiscent of tiramisu, yet surprisingly still quite good. Dining Hall Tiramisu is truly a sum of parts: each ingredient tastes fairly alright on its own, and they come together to create something equally alright-tasting, yet you have the pride of having assembled it yourself. 10/10, great slop.
Photo credits Iz Lee ’27
