Raw Bento

I’m having a self-declared half day off on this Friday morning. All I want to do are things that are close to my heart and relaxing so I’m actually listening to Karen Knowler’s latest teleclass while blogging this.

These pictures don’t do justice to this raw lemon cheesecake but I almost always eat desserts in the evening hence the not-so-clear pictures.

Anyway, this is an easy recipe to follow and it’s a top favourite in our household.

Recipe:

Cheesecake filling (in a high-speed blender):
2 cups soaked cashews
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3-4 pieces of lemon zest
3/4 cup nut milk
4 tbs maple syrup
2 scraped vanilla beans

Crust (in a food processor):
1 cup walnuts, soaked
1/2 cup sunflower seeds, soaked
8 dates
Dash of nutmeg
Dash of cinnamon
1 tbs cocoa powder

I deliberately left out any coconut oil or flakes because I wanted a distinctly different flavour from my other cheesecakes — raspberry vanilla, pineapple coconut, coconut lime, orange chocolate tart.

I would urge you to take time to scrape the black powder from vanilla pods because pure vanilla like that would give your cheesecake that rounded, soft flavour we associate so much with sweet desserts.

The tablespoonful of cocoa powder in the crust doesn’t really give it a chocolately taste but it makes it a deeper colour and adds a bit more oomph to a straight-up nut and date crust.