Vegan Cheesecake Alternative
Photo: Maria Grossmann
You can serve this as a dessert or cut it into small cubes and use as an afternoon treat. If you are serving it as a dessert, remove it from the freezer 7–10 min. before you want to cut it. Trying to cut it straight out of the freezer is almost impossible but can be funny. . . . Remember the scene from Pretty Woman when her snail flies through the fancy restaurant? When Julia Roberts laughs and says “Slippery little suckers” and the waiter kindly says “It happens all the time!” This is the kind of thing that happens to me all the time, with good humour and good friends; it is always the highlight of the meal.
For the base:
— 150 g chopped almonds
— 35 g gold sultanas
— 10 dates, stones removed
— 50 g melted coconut oil
— ½ tsp vanilla extract
— 45 g oats
— 10 g coconut, grated
— 30 g raw cocoa powder
— 15 g chia seeds
For the upper layer:
— 200 ml coconut milk
— 6 tbsp maple syrup
— 4 tbsp black sesame seeds
For the above recipe I used half to make afternoon pick-me-up treats and the other half as the base for the vegan cheesecake alternative. If you just want to make the small cake for around four people, halve the ingredients. I used a small round cake tin of 20 cm in diameter. Freeze the base overnight.
Soak the almonds, sultanas and dates in just-boiling water for 10 minutes. Grease a 15 × 22 cm baking tin and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes
Drain off the water, then add the rest of the ingredients and use a hand mixer or blender to make it into a paste. Make sure you use a high-quality blender as this is hard work and can be too much for machines without the right kind of power.
Press this paste into the prepared tin and then leave to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
For the upper layer mix all ingredients, pour over the base, and freeze again this time for at least 2 hours.