Raw vegan cheesecake with fruit puree topping

Lately I have been investigating “raw’ cooking. For those who don’t know raw cooking is essentially a way of preparing food without cooking or processing (aka no heat!). For those of you in bigger cities you may have noticed a few restaurants popping up lately catering to this such as “Rawlicious” here in Toronto. For my first attempt i decided I would go with a classic cheesecake! (For those of you who are strictly vegan substitute out the honey for your choice of sweetener)

How can someone make a vegan cheesecake?! The answer is cashews! These and of course several other nuts are used to create a wonderful chewy crust and and unique cheese layer. The addition of citrus juices and extracts help flavour the cashew cheese portion.

While some are happy with this alone as their dessert, i decided to go one step further and create a fruit puree topping with some honey to offset so many different nut flavours! Just remember in order to set these kinds of desserts you need to use the freezer to set (but not freeze!)

So go out and try something new!

-GC

PDF —————–>Vegan Cheesecake with fruit puree topping <———————PDF

Don’t forget to join us on Facebook!! Click here! 

Apple, Pear & Almond Crumble!

This post is dedicated to one of the staples in my diet, crumble. Not being able to eat most desserts drives me crazy, especially when the sweet cravings start. Today’s crumble is made with pears and apples but I encourage you to use a variety of different types of pears and apples. One important thing to remember is to always use ripe pears! The less ripe the pear the longer you will need to cook the crumble to get a soft texture.

This recipe is fast and easy and made of three sections. The crust is a simple almond flour base. If you wish, you don’t need the crust but i recommend it as it gives some extra crunch. The second part is the fruit! Make sure you cut the pieces into small cubes and mix in the spices really well so that all the fruit gets coated!

Finally, mix the topping mixture as soon as you are ready to put the crumble in the oven. Once the warmed honey mixes with the other ingredients it will become a thick mixture.  Drizzle the mixture with a spoon evenly over the pears. It may not seem like a lot of mixture, but trust me it is! I tried doubling it once and it turned out horrible!!

Check out the nutritional info here!

PDF————->Apple Pear and Almond Cardamom Crumble<—————PDF

Gingerbread spiced cake with Sweet pumpkin frosting!

I may not be able to eat grains or sugar but i know how to work around these little troubles and make delicious treats you can’t tell the difference. While visualizing this cake doesn’t knock your socks off, not being able to use any grains, sugar, preservatives or dairy does limit my artistic abilities, but trust me, I had to make 2 cakes because I ate the first one to myself in one sitting.

Today’s recipe is very much a winter/fall treat. This can be used to make cupcakes or a cake as I have done with it.  The key ingredients here are pumpkin, almond flour, lots of spices and honey.  Almond flour is a great substitute for any kind of wheat based recipe. It may need a few more eggs to hold together but in the end you produce something 100x healthier and easily digested. The key to any kind of “spiced” recipe is chosing the right combination of aromatic and flavorful spices. I have chosen to use, as I do in many of my pumpkin spiced treats: Cinnamon, ginger, ground cloves, nutmeg and allspice.

The frosting is a little more tricky then you would think. This will be my first attempt at making a sugar/dairy free frosting. I have used a coconut based manna/ cream you can buy at any health food store. Together with some honey and pumpkin puree you can whip yourself a healthy frosting like topping sure to please anyone! I will experiment with other frosting ideas to provide you with good options for big dinner parties, etc.

Enjoy!

-B-

PDF——————————>Gingerbread Spice Cake<—————————–PDF