The prompt? Fancy food.
If I were a betting gal, my money would've been on the other guy for this one. Despite the fact that we recently went on a trip off the rock where vegan food was abundant plus delicious, it wasn't fancy
Here's my offering for elegant vegan food. I made it last night and assembled it this morning. It's a raw vegan chocolate charcoal cheesecake with raw vegan chocolate charcoal hearts. Yes, that's correct, there's the not-so-secret "secret" ingredient of charcoal. Bonus also, this is completely nut free. Too many raw desserts rely way too heavily on nuts, more than I can tolerate unfortunately.
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| Raw Vegan Chocolate Cheesecake with Raw Vegan Chocolates Made with charcoal |
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| Without the black and white filter For some reason, my pure white plate looks creamy |
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| I think any recipe that requires an infrared thermometer should get extra credit |
This recipe is riffing on something that "Joey's Plate" put up for Valentine's Day because apparently she and I have something in common in our loathing of that holiday. I'm not the only one with a cold dark heart. I used her method for the cake as well as her recipe for the sauce/molded chocolate, but I didn't want to make a lemon cake, I wanted chocolate. For that I went to the internet and found a raw vegan chocolate cheesecake recipe, but I also changed that base recipe a lot. Sprinkled with cacao nibs because you know, there's never enough darkness in my heart.
The Pros:
It's vegan
It's chocolate
It's delicious
It's (relatively) fancy
It's gluten free
It's nut free
I tried something new
The Cons:
-The molds. I should've used smaller silicone molds for the cake like shown in Joey's Plate. Her edges were perfectly sharp and crisp. These were too large to get a crisp edge when removing from the mold. I thought they'd be just right, but not quite. Also, the star mold I used was from a thrift, when I unmolded the stars I realized they were not getting the smooth shiny finish intended. The heart mold is perfect, I'll use this a lot.
-The cost! My riffing meant I used raw organic versions of coconut butter, cacao butter, cacao paste, coconut, vanilla bean powder and dates.... just to name a few. Remarkably I had every ingredient on hand except the charcoal. That said, I would never go out and buy all these speciality ingredients specifically for this.
-Learning curve on charcoal. I've never worked with charcoal in food. You need way more to color chocolate black than the original lemon cake recommended in the recipe. WAY more.
-It's messy to make and requires extra cleaning if you're a messy person in the kitchen (I am)
-The recipe calls for an infrared thermometer. Seriously, who has that? Well, thanks to the other happy vegan we do, but otherwise I would've skipped right over the recipe. Supposedly it was to keep the temp low enough for raw as well as emulsification. Whatever.
As fancy as this hopefully is, next time I go for raw vegan cheesecake of any flavor, I would choose a more realistic recipe for the budget. If you stick with the recipe from Joey's Plate, it will be far easier on the wallet. I really like working with charcoal, expect to see that pop up again.
The flavor is surprisingly good. I plated it this morning and tasted it. I didn't taste the chocolates yet, but the other happy vegan gave them a thumbs up
There it is, vegan food, fancy style.
What do you think March will bring our way? I'm looking forward to it!
Nom on, vegan style, fancy or not!
xo
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