Raw Cheese Cake- the secrets revealed

Here is the recipe!

Acai Goji Cheesecake

‘Finally!’ I hear you say 😉

First of all let me express my gratitude to Matthew Kenney and his book ‘Everyday Raw’ for inspiring me to venture into the realm of vegan raw cheese cake ‘imitations’ (far yummier than most of the baked dairy-based ones – apart from yours, mum ;-))

This recipe is not for the faint-hearted chef – as the ones who have attended my Raw Cheesecake Master Classes can confirm. You will have to run your high power blender with an open lid and fold over the filling with a rubber spatula while blending.

Cheese cake making

In my element at the Wise Cicada – making raw cheese cakes.

But don’t worry. I can happily supply you with custom made cakes of this kind upon request. Just drop me a line on our ‘Contact‘ page. As long as you are in Auckland, NZ… 🙂

White Chai and Chocolate Raw Cheesecake

And you are still looking for the recipe, right?!
OK, I will give you the non-chocolate version as a basis for your experiments. For a cacao alternative just add 1 cup of cacao powder in the very end. Be aware, that you are adding a whole cup of dry powder to a mixture that is already quite thick. More spatula work!!! …and watch the temperature of your filling mix! Once it starts steaming, you’ve left the realm of raw foods 😉 – and so have the life enzymes.
Only remedy in that case: Lots of extra Love.

Swirly Chai Chocolate Raw Cheesecake

Basic Raw Lemon Cheesecake

Inspired by Matthew Kenney, yet adjusted to fill a big pie shell
Yields a large round tart pan with 16-20 pieces

Crust
4c shredded coconut

1.5 c cashew flour

1 T coconut oil

4 T date paste

Filling
4c cashews

3/4c lemon juice

1c coconut sugar

1c coconut oil, melted

1/2c filtered water, if required

1 t vanilla powder

¼ c lemon zest

Crust

  1. Mix all ingredients together well in a food processor, starting with the dry ingredients, then adding the ‘wet’ ones.
  2. Press into plastic-lined fluted French tart pan to desired thickness. Make sure the rim of your crust has an even height and thickness all around!
  3. Chill crust in freezer for at least 15min or until ready to fill.

Filling

  1. Blend all ingredients in a powerful high-speed blender until very smooth. Start with cashews, coconut sugar and the water-based liquids. When the cashews resemble a smooth thick cream add coconut oil. The flavours can be adjusted last. Adjust liquids as required for the blender to still turn the mixture over. You will have to use the plunger or a spatula to help mixing the filling. Give your blender motor a break from time to time and monitor the temperature of your filling closely. Too much water will make your final cake runny and too little liquids will make your filling too thick for your blender to turn it over without burning a fuse.
  2. To fill the crust properly the blender should contain about 1.2-1.5l of mixture.
  3. Fill the crust and chill in freezer overnight.
  4. Remove from tart pan and wrap with plastic film. Label with flavour and production date.
  5. Store in freezer.
  6. Remove 15-20min prior to cutting and serving

Other flavours can be achieved with red grape juice, acai berry powder, goji berries, chai extract, chai- or cherry concentrate, goji/apricot, cranberry, 2c of melted frozen blueberry/strawberry etc. Make sure to reduce the amount of water accordingly!!!

Good luck!

René

🙂

PS: Next trick: make two different fillings in one pie shell!

Goji Chocolate Cheesecake halves

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Raw Cheese Cakes de-mystified – a Master Class

Catering the raw desserts for the One World Café at the Prana New Year 2012 festival has given us plenty of practice and opportunity to fine tune our recipes. We are now announcing our first Raw Cheese Cake Master Class.

Dark BeautyWhere: Wise Cicada Café, 23 Crowhurst Street, Newmarket, Auckland

When: Wednesday, February 1st, 2012, 6.30-8.30pm

How much: $55.-/person

This class will be run as an interactive food demonstration. René will be preparing several raw cheese cakes right in front of you. You will have the chance to taste the finished products and ask all your questions. We will provide you with copies of the recipes to all  demonstrated cakes and will, as always, offer you many many ideas – so bring a pen!

René will basically demonstrate two kinds of raw vegan “cheese” cakes – the cashew-based kind, as served at the Wise Cicada Café and Prana and the young coconut meat version as served at Lydia’s and René’s wedding 🙂

Strawberry Coconut Cream Cake, cutThe latter to provide you with ideas on how to use the delicious young coconut meat from the drinking coconuts available now.

ALSO: René will put special focus on the art of making ‘perfect’ raw crusts and their use for different occasions like cakes, pies as well as small tartlets, perfect for catering.

Divine dessertsAll our recipes are vegan, gluten-free and raw. You will graduate from this class with the confidence to prepare stunning raw cheese cakes on your own. We will also be there for you to help you pick the right ingredients and equipment. Any questions later on – just contact us here, by phone, e-mail or at the Café in Newmarket.

The spaces for this class are limited to 20 students so please reserve your place early. We have already taken several bookings.

Send us an e-mail from our contact page or ring René on 0275551622.

Alternatively register at the Wise Cicada shop counter.

We are looking forward to seeing you shortly.

🙂

Swirly CCCC

Prana, Raw Cheese Cakes and a word on Raw Food Blenders

Yep, the Prana New Year 2012 Festival is over. It was stunning! Despite the rain we had a Blast supplying the ‘One World Café’ with raw desserts. Jack and René arrived well ahead of the crowds and went straight to work making raw granola, our vegan chocolate müsli slice, chocolate walnuts, and raw cheese cakes. Jack truly refined the art of crust making during the festival. In the end we counted a total of 18 raw cheese cakes made and sold. By the time the festival started we had 16 in the freezer waiting to be served and just topped it up with two more in the end. The selection of flavours we had were: lemon, lemon vanilla, lime vanilla, goji apricot, chocolate peppermint, chocolate chai, spicy chai, passionfruit vanilla, goji chocolate, maple chocolate and layered as well as swirled combinations of the above.

Antioxidant powerLydia joined us a day later and put her loving energy into our Super Hero Bliss Balls as well as tied up all the loose ends around our raw food operation in the back kitchen as well as lovingly tending the front dessert counter.

We had an AMAZING crew volunteeOne World Caféring in the kitchen and helping us occasionally. The groovy music in our part of the kitchen seemed to help a bit 😉

raw chocolate

from top clockwise: peppermint choc, ginger cashew, goji cashew, plain choc and cashew, pure choc orange

Once the festival was under way we also supplied the nightly chocolate bar with a selection of our raw chocolate buttons in various flavours. Jack became great at making a vibrant-looking strawberry chocolate torte (which was a mission to cut :-)) and we also sent out the occasional Orgasmic Blueberry Pie.

Avocado Chocolate at its BEST!Overall we had a splendid time in the kitchen and at the festival. Having prepared so much in advance we had enough time to attend a few concerts and music happenings when the rain stopped 🙂 Jack was out networking and jamming with great enthusiasm. Lydia and I enjoyed ourselves at Caitlin and Sika‘s concerts, laughter yoga and a late night drumming circle in the large tipi – which was out of this world!!!

Yes, the Raw Food Blenders!

We had three different models in our prep zone: Jack’s late model Vitamix, Maya’s LexSun (replaced by OmniBlend brand nowadays – see below) and our trusted BlendTec Total Blender.

The LexSun full of cheese cake fillingThey all performed extremely well. Yet making raw cheese cakes in series production really showed the different models’ strengths. Guess, which one tolerated the most ‘abuse’/hard work?! Maya it was your darling LexSun blender! After the VitaMix and BlendTec had both requested a holiday in the freezer to reset their over heat fuse the LexSun completed the job without complaint. Very impressive!

The strategy René followed in the end to make the raw cheese cake filling was to blend the whole batch in the LexSun – somewhere between 1.2-1.5 liter of thick cashew mix. After everything had mixed well and the cashews were kind of finely broken down I split the batch and finished it in two parts in the BlendTec – which definitely achieved the smoothest texture – 750ml as optimum fill level.

Lively Swirls

The cool thing about this strategy was that it allowed for colourful swirly cakes with different flavours combined in one crust. The most popular one was the spicy chai and chocolate one.

These days the LexSun is replaced in New Zealand by the identical OmniBlend machines at a more reasonable price. Make sure you get the new jar with it – which is a larger copy of the BlendTec jar. Perfect combination! This on here.

For a generous 15% off the listed prices on the OmniBlend website with free shipping in NZ apply this discount code: RAFS2014

Oh, did I mention that we will be teaching a Raw Cheese Cake class?

See you there!

René

🙂