What do you do when a blizzard cancels your raw food cooking class and you have cashews soaking for prep? Make a great raw recipe for cheesecake! I love the combination of orange and chocolate. A bag of beautiful, fragrant oranges was sitting on the counter. Time to have some fun. The texture came out beautiful, and the taste is divine. Another recipe that would be perfect for holiday entertaining. I used a little orange essential oil in this to really kick up the orange flavor. You might want to note that essential oils are not considered raw and you want to be sure you are using food grade oils for recipes. This is a really simple, quick yet impressive “cheesecake”.
Orange Chocolate Cheesecake
Crust:
- 1 C Almonds*
- 1/4 C Cacao Powder
- 3 Dates
Combine all ingredients in the food processor. Process until ground fine. Mixture should hold together when pressed. If it doesn’t, add water, 1 T at a time until texture is achieved. Set aside 1/4 C. Press remaining into bottom of 6″ spring form pan. Place in refrigerator.
*I always pre-soak all my almonds and dry them as soon as I get them.
Filling:
- 3 Oranges (make sure you have very good oranges)
- 2/3 C Agave
- 2 1/2 C Cashews (soaked at least 3 hours)
- 3/4 C Coconut Butter
- 1/2 t. Sweet Orange Essential Oil (optional as it is not raw but still very healthy)
Grate the zest off of all the oranges. You should have at least 3 T. Be careful to only get the orange part as the pith (the white) is bitter. Squeeze the juice out of all the oranges. You should have about 2/3 C. Place cashews, agave, coconut butter, zest, essential oil, and agave and orange juice in the food processor and process until very smooth. Pour over crust, sprinkle extra crust on top and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving.
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Susan,
I see that the question has been asked about substituting the Agave and that you answered by saying that some people don’t like it (which I am one) and that there are substitutes… though 2 people have used honey, one worked with the recipe, the other did not.
Can you offer any other substitutions for the Agave? Stevia or Xylitol perhaps? I’m new to this and don’t want to make a disaster and have no real clues what works for substitutions in this type of situation.
thanks!
I made this cake for a dinner hosted by a friend. I made 2 batches. one with 6inch and and one with 9inch. My 9 inch came out perfect and the people at the party loved it. As most of my friends like light sugar on their cakes this was perfect. My 6ich was good but not too good. It didn’t set properly. Two things didn’t go well. One is I soaked the roasted cashews for probably hour(recipe didn’t mention whether it should be roasted or raw). Secondly I think I added too much zest. May be the oranges at home are too flavorful(we have 2 good orange trees). However the taste was little bit bitter on my small cake and it didn’t set well. My big cake(i used 1 and 1/2 ingredients) was a hit! I again used roasted cashews but let them soaked overnight and used less zest(just a few strands). Thanks!
About the cashews…this is a raw food website. So, we use raw cashews.
. Second, if you do not follow the recipe, ie using roasted cashews and not soaking them the proper time, I can’t guarantee results. Orange zest does have a bitterness to it and if you added too much, it would make your cheesecake bitter. The soaking time is extremely important to get the cashews to the right consistency and roasted cashews have very different properties than raw.
Glad your larger one turned out. Cheers!
I’m not sure what I did wrong but this didn’t firm up like in the picture. I followed the directions exactly and ended up putting it in the freezer to get to be more pie than pudding. It tasted great,just flopped out of the form. Any tricks I can use? I heard Irish moss can be used just not sure how?
I am not sure what you did wrong. I have made this many times, as have many others with great success. Adding any ingredients to this would drastically change the recipe.
Hi!
I’m very new to raw eating and raw foods… Can you tell me exactly what you mean when you say “soaking” nuts and also what you mean by drying them?
Thank you!
Soak nuts = soak them in water. Dry nuts = dry them in a dehydrator under the temp of 115. There is more information here: http://www.rawmazing.com/raw-food-soaking-nuts-and-seeds/
Is orange essential oil edible ?
Rodi, thanks for asking. In the post I specify that you should use food grade essential oils. Cheers!
I too don’t want to use Agave and saw a posting above requesting alternatives. Can you respond with other suggestions – or let us know if honey would work? Thanks
I wish substitutions were straight up but they are not. You can certainly try honey but I can’t guarantee the results as I haven’t had time to try it. Cheers!
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