I know you, you always order 3 piece cheesecake

Cheesecake, we love it with its smooth texture and rich taste that melts in our mouths with every single bite we take. How the heck do you make a vegan cheesecake without cheese? Is it blasphamy to even do such a thing?

Most would say yes...but I like to live dangerously and for those of us that like to be more animal friendly or those that have a dairy allergy this is something that you might be missing in your life.

Many vegan "cheeses" are made from nuts, with addition of herbs or a dab of lemon juice you can give it that tang or flavor you would find in a normal dairy based cheese.

I made cream cheese previously out of coconut milk but this won't be the correct texture for a cheesecake. This time it's all about being nuts, wait just nuts... they are what is going to be the base of the cheesy part of the cheesecake. You can look online and a lot of recipes call for cashews, they have a creamy smooth texture but they can be an expensive nut.

For this "experiment" I used cashews for one recipe and blanched almonds for another, both of which I purchased at Trader Joe's. A lot of recipes call for soaking the nuts over night...ain't nobody got time for that. You can cut your prep time down by boiling enough water to cover your nuts and then pouring them over the nuts in a separate bowl and let it sit for an hour. Here's a few pictures of my nuts just hanging out in a nice little spa bath.

While the nuts were enjoying their little spa treatment I started to assemble the crusts for the two types of cheesecakes I was making. For my fruit based cheesecake I went with a pecan and date crust, which is simply pecans and dates smashed together in a food processor, easy enough right?. I use medjool dates because they are very juicy and make the mixture stick together better and they are giagantic suckers so it takes less of them to make the crust, just be sure your dates are pitted before you put them in the food processor. My other cheesecake crust was a basic mixture of crushed oreos and a little bit of melted coconut oil, again easy peesy.

You could technically keep the shells the way you want to make these raw cheesecakes but I decided to put them in cupcake liners and bake them briefly at 350F to give them a bit of a crunch and give the cheesecake a more solid base.

The crusts are crusty and the nuts have enjoyed their brief stay in the spa, so now it's time to get down to business and assemble these cheesecakes. In a food processor I put in the cashews with some coconut milk, apple cider vinegar, melted coconut oil and some agave nectar to sweeten it up. I use apple cider vinegar but you can also use lemon juice, I don't because I have a citrus allergy. My second cheesecake was a peanut butter one so it has the same ingredients as the one above but adds a bit of peanut butter to make this even more delicious and almonds instead of cashews. All the ingredients are combined in a food processor, you can also use a blender and make it as creamy as you want. My food processor didn't make the mixture super smooth, as you can see in the picture below it's still a little chunky but this will change when they are in the set-up phase.

Combining all the ingredients is a snap and soon enough I'm ready to put that delcious goopey mess into the cupcake liners where the crust is. I personally use an ice cream scooper to put the filling into the liner, since these aren't being baked again I filled them a little bit more full than usual and they won't rise like a cake would. After everything was all scooped into their corresponding crust now it's time to make it more fancy! These were a request from my mom for her birthday, she asked for a cherry cheesecake so I took a few frozen cherries I had and added a little bit of coconut milk to them to make a puree and added about a teaspoon to the top of each mini cheese cake. I then took a toothpick and swirled the puree into the filling, you can mix it in as much or as little as you want.

I decided to make the peanut butter ones for myself and topped those with a chocolate ganache.

Chocolate ganache sounds hard but honestly it's super simple to make and it's soooo incredibly tasty. All you need is some canned coconut milk to take the top part off (it's creamier because it's the "fatty" part of the coconut milk or you can use coconut cream) for the amount I needed I just used 3 Tbsps of coconut milk and 3 squares of bakers semi-sweet chocolate. Put this on low heat and keep mixing until it's combined.

I added about 2 tsps of ganache on top of each cheesecake and swirled it in. I had some left over that I used to eat with some strawberries...mmmm

The assembly is complete! Time to get these babies in the freezer to set up overnight. I coverd the cupcake trays with plastic wrap, I suggest the press and seal wrap so you don't get ice crystals forming on your cheesecakes if the plastic wrap lifts up. You can freeze your cheesecakes for less time, typically 3-4 hours is enough to set them up, be sure to let them sit out about 10 minutes to thaw when you are ready to serve or you can take them after the 4 hours and put them into a container so you can have cheesecake delciousness for days!

Here's the finished project the next day.... YEAH science!!

Until next time! happy baking!