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I've caught the raw cheesecake bug!

I am working on perfecting a new "adult" recipe for a cheesecake idea I came up with for my husband.  We made it on Labor day when we made a bunch of mini cakes to try different flavors.  The "adult" cake was the best of the bunch, but still needs a little tweaking!

If it ain't broke.......make it better!

After the success with the first cheesecake, I spent the weekend creating new flavors and coming up with future ideas to share with you.  The first one that came to the husband's mind was raspberry.  Quick trip to the grocery store and a few ideas later I came up with the above raspberry and vanilla bean raw cheesecake!  I even impressed myself a bit with the chocolate drizzles.

I stuck with the same basic vanilla bean recipe in the Vanilla Bean, Chocolate, Peanut Butter Cheesecake recipe, except I added another full lemon to see if it would give it a bit more of that tartness that cheesecake usually has.  The crust stayed the same as well.  The only thing that changed was the raspberry topping and the dark chocolate drizzle.

Raspberry Vanilla Bean Cheesecake

Crust and Vanilla Bean filling-Follow the recipe found hereVanilla Bean, Chocolate, Peanut Butter Cheesecake
Add juice of 1 additional lemon

Raspberry topping
1-small container of raspberries
2-3 ts of potato starch
2 tablespoons of honey

Chocolate Drizzle
1-2 squares from a chocolate bar.  I used 85% dark chocolate.

Place all ingredients in a pan and heat on medium-low.  Using a spoon or spatula, squish the raspberries so they become a liquid with seeds.  The sauce should thicken with the heat and the potato starch.  Once it reaches a thickened sauce state (about 3-4 minutes) pour over the vanilla bean filling.

Now, place your chocolate squares in a glass bowl and put in the microwave.  If you have the history like I do of over cooking chocolate, you will know why I say to watch this closely.  Stick the chocolate in the microwave for :30 intervals.  After the first :30, take out and stir.  Depending on your microwave, you may not need a full second :30 cycle.  Once the chocolate has reached a nice liquid state, used your spoon and roll it in the chocolate and then drizzle across the cake.

The raspberry takes a bit longer to solidify, so I kept this one in the freezer over night and then moved to the fridge.

Cheesecake for Breakfast?!

One of the ironic things that I have learned along this path to healthier eating is when you cook with healthy whole foods, there really isn't an 'inappropriate' time to eat anything.  The past few months I haven't been eating dairy and have been staying away from all the sugar add-ins most ice creams have, instead I have been freezing slices of bananas, tossing them in the food processor and enjoying some banana ice cream.........I may or may not have indulged for breakfast, too.

This little creation of mine is no different.  I have been experimenting with numerous grain, dairy, egg, sugar free recipes for awhile now, but I wanted something a little bit more 'gourmet'.  I looked around and found that many people use cashew cream for raw cheesecakes.  I had a little experience in making cashew cream after making these chicken pot pies from the spunky coconut http://www.thespunkycoconut.com/2011/01/pot-pie-pockets-gluten-free-casein-free.html.  Her recipes are incredible and really motivated me to get more creative about what I am making.

Truly, the hardest part about this recipe is waiting for your cashews to soak.  I have seen some people say you don't really need to soak them for more than an hour or so, but I have always just thrown them in water before going to work and by the time I get back, we are ready to go.  For this recipe, you don't need to save the water that the cashews are soaking in, but if you have more cashews in soaking than you need, throw the extra in a food processor with some of the water you soaked them in.  Blend it up and stick in the fridge.  You can use the cashew cream for so many things!

I wanted to create a recipe that was strong in flavor and really resembled a 'normal' dessert.  Naturally, my first instinct was peanut butter and chocolate.  Ok, yes, I usually avoid legumes and peanuts are legumes, however, you can sub in almond butter if you prefer.  I preferred a little cheat.  If you know me well, you know how crazy it is for me to now think of peanuts and peanut butter as "cheats" in my diet haha!  I am going to keep developing some new flavors, but for now, we have Vanilla, Chocolate, and peanut butter Cheesecake! You can also cut down on some of the vanilla if wanted.  I was concerned with the cake having too much of a cashew, nutty flavor so I put much more vanilla than I intended to.

Vanilla Bean, Chocolate, Peanut Butter Cheesecake
Crust

The carb lover in me really likes crust.  That being said, if you don't want as much of a crust or don't want a crust that goes up the side as well, feel free to cut the recipe in half. 

10 Dates

Half Cup of Almond flour

1 Cup of Pecans

3 tsp vanilla

Filling

• 2 c raw organic cashews, soaked overnight (just put in a bowl and fill with filtered water about an inch above the cashews)
• 5-6 large dates
• 1/3 c coconut oil, melted
• Juice from 1 lemon (about 1/3 cup)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract or seeds from 1 vanilla bean (I used both)
• 1/4 c almond milk
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

• 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp water

• ·         1/3 c +2 TB of peanut butter

• ·         3 TB agave nectar

• ·         1 TB vanilla

For the Crust

Combine all ingredients in a food processor.  Blend until the crust sticks together when squeezed in your hand and is a darker brown color.  You may need to add a few more dates as needed.  Put a piece of parchment paper into an 8” spring pan and pour crust into pan.  Press the crust into the bottom of the pan and up the side about an inch or as crust allows.

Filling

Vanilla-Combine all ingredients up until the cocoa powder in a food processor.  After all is blended and VERY SMOOTH, remove 2/3 C and put into a separate bowl.

Chocolate-With the 2/3C you set aside, add the cocoa powder and water until well blended

Peanut Butter-Combine the peanut butter, agave nectar, and vanilla in a separate bowl and stir until well mixed.

Pour  the vanilla  into the crust and spread evenly with the back of a spoon.  Follow this with the peanut butter and then the chocolate.

Tap on the counter to even out.  If you don’t plan to eat it for a while, you can put it straight into the fridge.  We were eager to eat it, so we stuck it in the freezer for about an hour and then moved it down to the fridge and it was perfectly set!  Keep this in your fridge for up to a week……if it lasts that long!

Trial and Error

At first when I started on this journey it was easy to contain my food change to just myself.  As much as I wanted my husband to jump on board, I didn't want to force it upon him.  The further I got, though, the more my cooking changes seeped into his "food world".  Luckily I am blessed to have an amazingly supportive husband.  Not only has he been very open to trying new things, new versions of old things, and just plain weird new things, he has also opened up and adopted a new way of eating, as well.  That being said, you can still find him cracking open a can of coke every now an then.

I knew from the beginning that the key to me successfully adapting to such a big change in the way that we ate, was to be able to incorporate things we have always eaten, but with a newer, healthier approach. Sure, we eat a lot more organic veggies, we cook with coconut oil, we loosely follow a Paleo diet, but what about when your sweet tooth comes a'callin?  As much as I would love to be, I am not someone that can satisfy a craving with a few almonds and peanut butter chips or something of that variation.  We want our future kids to eat even healthier than we do now, never knowing McDonald's and not rewarding themselves with food,  but we still want to celebrate occasions with cake, right!?   That has sparked the biggest motivation in me, I love a challenge.  Lately I have tried my hands at gluten and sugar free banana/chocolate muffins & banana muffins, GF, SF, and Dairy Free raspberry lemon bars, gluten free and sugar free sandwich bread and today I am taking my second crack at gluten and dairy free yellow cake.

The first time I made this cake, it turned out phenomenally well!  I want to keep trying it and changing it so I can make it GF, DF, and sugar free.  My first go-round, the only sugar was in the icing and the pudding mix I put inside the cake.  Today, I am trying the same recipe, however I subbed in sugar free pudding mix and subbed coconut oil for olive oil.  I also wanted to mix the flavors up a bit.  I have become a huge fan of our local Farmer's Market and I bought a pint of fresh strawberries from a vendor yesterday, so I decided to make it a strawberry cake and then try out some homemade strawberry buttercream frosting.

This has proven to be a day of lessons in the kitchen.  The cake has turned out great, once again....I think I have the recipe nailed down.  The icing, however, is a whole other, fishy story.  Lately I have been using Earth Balance Buttery Spread in place of any butter that we would have once used.  Anyone that has used this stuff, would probably agree with me that it has a bit...ok quite a bit, of a fishy taste and smell.  When cooking with it or spreading it on something, I don't really notice the taste or smell, so I figured I could easily sub it for usual butter in the buttercream recipe.  WRONG!  I creamed the "butter", cut up and added my fresh strawberries and then added the powdered sugar.  It looked delicious, for a moment I was quite proud of myself, I must say.  Then came the taste test.....fish food all the way!  I even added every last bit of strawberries that I had in hopes of the added flavor covering up the 'fish essence'-no such luck and my frosting became to liquid-y.  Thankfully, I have learned over the past few months of eating well that Pillbury icing is actually dairy free....even the buttercream!  Now, of course, this leads me to wonder what in the world they put in it then, but at this point, I just wanted to have my cake and eat it, too. 

The cake turned out great, other than being slightly overdone, but now I think my next challenge will be dairy free buttercream that doesn't taste like it came fresh from the nearest lake and then eventually sugar free icing of some sort.  I now sub Agave nectar in all recipes when they call for sugar, however since it is a liquid, I don't think it will make for good frosting.  Stay tuned!