I know, I know, that’s a terrible title, but what else could I call it? It has a raw nut-and-fruit crust, heavy on the pistachios and the apricots, it has a vegan chocolate mousse filling, with more apricot jam to give it a bit of a lift, and the whole thing is rich, rich rich.
But (mostly) good for you!
I mean, think about it – the nuts and dried fruit are full of protein and vitamins and iron. The bitter, dark chocolate is full of anti-oxidants and happiness. The tofu has more protein and is undoubtedly healthy in other ways that I’ve forgotten. It’s practically a tonic! You should eat it for breakfast!
OK, maybe that’s taking it too far, but I am ridiculously proud of this tart. You see, it was my turn to bring cake to our monthly admin meeting this week, and, as you might possibly have intuited, it has been fiendishly hot around here. I really couldn’t face baking anything, but I couldn’t do something sensible like cheesecake, because my admin group also includes a couple of people who can’t eat lactose or gluten. At this point, a sane person would have given up and gone and bought something for the meeting, but, as we have previously established, I’m not a sane person, at least when it comes to food.
So I crossed a chocolate mousse recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World with a whole lot of different raw truffle and raw cheesecake recipes from people like Hannah at Wayfaring Chocolate and Kiri at Bite Sized Thoughts, and came up with this – a decadent dessert that takes less than an hour to make. It may be more like half an hour if one is organised and not wandering around the kitchen foraging for likely ingredients.
Incidentally, it tastes amazing…
Your shopping list:
1/2 cup cashews 1 cup pistachios (plus a handful more to garnish) 1/2 cup walnuts 1/2 cup pumpkin seed meal, or ground pistachios, or almond meal 1 cup fresh dates, pits removed 1/2 cup dried apricots (plus a handful more to garnish) 20 ml maple syrup, plus 60 ml for the filling 750 g tofu (a firm one with a fairly silky texture would be good here) 125 ml orange juice 60 ml apricot jam 5 ml orange flower water 650 g dark, dark chocolate, oh yeah.
It’s very hot today – in fact, it’s our first really hot day for the season – which is a pity, because I wanted to make red lemonade scones and fruit mince and Christmas Pudding, and also to start perfecting agar jellies. But it really is not the weather for that sort of cooking, so behold! Another book review! And one of great aptness to the weather, as you will see, because it is all about raw food.
