VeganMoFo 2019 Day 18: Beat the Heat With Cake!

Success!
Raw Vegan Unicorn Cheesecake!
ALL NATURAL, NO DYES!

She was so pretty!

We have a situation.
Let me explain.

Today I actually hit the subject matter "prompt" which is something that cools us down in the summer. As I am doing 31 cakes in 31 days, my summer cooler of course is done cake style. Raw vegan unicorn cheesecake. Oh, and yes, a situation on cake #3, I'll explain at the end.

I have been wanting to make a unicorn cheesecake or a galaxy cheesecake for a long time. I didn't have all the ingredients, I only had blue spirulina and charcoal. I finally broke down and invested in pink pitaya powder and butterfly pea powder. Apparently I'm the least organized caker right now, I knew the unicorn cake was on tap, but I didn't have anything to make the base with... no coconut cream, no cashews, no tofu. I searched and searched for a suitable recipe, there simply was none. So this is my own creation. My colors are still relatively vibrant considering I used almonds that had their skins still on. I can imagine how beautiful this cake would have been if I had made it with cashews or coconut cream, and it would've probably been a bit more creamy too. But around here necessity is the mother of invention, and I do need to work with as much as what I have on hand. The crust is a non-measured mixture of almonds, dates, coconut, coconut oil with a splash of agave which I prepped in a food processor til crumbly and patted into a 6" lined cake pan. Then I made 4 different batches of cake layers in the Vitamix. Each layer essentially had the same ingredients, but I colored each layer with either the blue, pink or purple. One layer was left white (you can see the tiny flecks from the almond skins, but since I used a Vitamix the consistency was smooth). Using whole almonds with skins on surely tamped down the vibrant colors as well as gives this is much more noticeable nutty flavor. The layer ingredients are non roasted almonds, raw sunflower seeds, coconut oil, lemon juice, coconut oil, vanilla bean powder, agave and non-dairy milk (a splash to thin it). This cake was totally "on the fly" and I have no recipe to provide you. It's softer than it should be, you can see in the photos the edges are not as sharp at least as I expect a raw cake to be. This is because I didn't follow a recipe of course. Overall, this cake would likely fetch $8 (or more) for each small slice in a fancy restaurant, there's a crap ton of nuts in there, plus those powders do not come cheap either. I'm actually surprised how tasty this is and now I am committing to getting the proper ingredients, following a recipe and doing another unicorn cake at some point. It won't be this month, but it will be happening at some point. I love these beautiful powders, they can be used for almost anything (a blue coconut latte is totally in my future).

Now, about that third photo above, please let me explain. I could've "phoned in" today's blog post. Very early this morning (oh yes, I was up way too early for a beach cleanup) the other happy vegan told me that our friend down the street said he has something with my name on it in his freezer, it's been there for ages, but he has no clue what it was, and he kept forgetting to tell us. I told the other happy vegan well I have no clue either, best retrieve it and stop cluttering up his freezer. My jaw dropped a bit when he came back with the item. It was my 2017 raw vegan birthday cake. The one I had made shortly before Irma. I didn't celebrate my birthday in 2017 because we were so busy prepping for the storm, then the storm hit and you know the rest. But up to Irma, I had been back on my raw track for quite a while and had planned ahead enough to make a raw vegan peanut butter chocolate cake. Actually I think I may have even mentioned that cake in one of my 2017 MoFo videos. I guess we ate a piece each at some point because from the looks of this there's 2 pieces missing. In all the chaos of bouncing from shelter to trailer to bombed out house, to another house, to another trailer and blah blah blah... this cake just got lost. I remember putting it in our friend's freezer because he actually still had a freezer; he was fortunate to be among the very few who's house sustained damage but not catastrophic. And we even stayed in that house for a little bit of time. How funny is it that I cared enough about this cake to save it. I guess after losing so much, even a cake seemed like one of my most important possessions. At the time, likely it was. So, that's the third cake, which I refer to as "the situation." It's still on my counter, I have to toss it of course. That white frosty stuff is freezer burn. It still looks enough like what it was 2 years ago that even if I didn't make this I could guess what it was. Irma, the gift that just won't stop giving.

I'm pleased with today's offering, but sorry I cannot offer you a recipe. There's tons of raw vegan unicorn cake recipes on line, I recommend you take a crack at one. If you worry about something being too "nut heavy" simply go with one of the coconut cream versions (that's my plan too).

Cake 18 in the bag.

xo