This was a delicious accident. I meant for this to be your run-of-the-mill raw vegan cream cake (which sounds like an oxymoron... shh), but I wanted to add a bit more substance to it without adding a bunch more heaviness, so I chose to throw in some chia seeds. I figured they could multi-task and work to thicken up the batter too, since chia seeds plump up with liquids and make a kinda superfood pudding. Well, thank goodness I did. When I took the cake out of the freezer, sliced myself a piece and tasted it - I was pleasantly surprised by the texture. It's light and fluffy just like marshmallows! Not nearly as sweet, because I prefer to leave my desserts au natural and not add too much sweetness (even though my sweeteners are pretty au natural themselves), but I immediately thought: I can call this bad boy a marshmallow cake!
I made this to serve at my [third] vegan potluck tonight last night. I'm in Vancouver, Canada and I hope you are too so you can make it out and we can chill together and share a piece o' dis. If you aren't in my corner of the globe, you can still try this cake though. It's because of this magical thing called the internet. Get the recipe below, or continue reading my ramblings for a few minutes.
There are three layers to this thing. They all have a base of cashews, lemon juice, coconut oil and coconut sugar. The first layer has mint and spirulina added, the second layer has some vanilla and extra cashews, and the top is coloured with fresh beets. The crust is mainly quinoa flour. This cake is SUPER GOOD for you {body, mind and soul}. As usual, if you don't have all the exact ingredients I list, I give you about a billion substation options. This would be excellent drizzled in raw chocolate sauce. But then again, wouldn't everything?
Example: "Jack, come over here. I wanna drizzle you in chocolate sauce."
See?
The flavours in this recipe are not as mainstream as say, this chocolate cream cake. Spirulina is an acquired taste, although you can hardly detect it in this, but still. And although I personally LOVE a little beet flavour in desserts, I understand a lot of folks aren't used to it. So I would suggest making this for people who are already pretty into raw vegan cuisine and perhaps NOT total raw food newbs, because their palates simply might not be ready to enjoy it. Make the newbs the chocolate cake linked above, they'll love dat one. Or hey, maybe YOU'RE new to all this!? If so, same advice. Come back to this recipe once your taste buds have become more receptive to fresh foods. It's not that this cake is super strange-tasting or anything. I think it's freaking delicious. But I can imagine feeding this to someone who regularly eats cheeseburgers and dairy ice cream cakes and their reaction being: this is weird. We gotta remember than refined foods are laden with nasty stuff that effectively drug our taste buds and palates into comas. When you go from a processed diet to a wholesome diet, there will be a period of adjustment where you need to get used to REAL, FRESH food and flavours. I hope I am making sense here. In summary: the flavours in this recipe are not conventional, but I think that's cool.
Soundtrack to this cake? Right here.
MARSHMALLOW CREAM CAKE
Serves: 8-12
Crust:
1 cup dry quinoa
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1/4 cup coconut sugar
Mint layer:
1 cup raw cashews, soaked in water for 3 hours then rinsed
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/6 cup coconut sugar
1/6 cup fresh mint leaves
1-2 teaspoons spirulina powder, as desired
1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 tablespoon chia seeds
Vanilla layer:
1 1/6 cups raw cashews, soaked in water for 3 hours then rinsed
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/6 cup coconut sugar
1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 tablespoon chia seeds
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pink layer:
1 cup raw cashews, soaked in water for 3 hours then rinsed
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/6 cup coconut sugar
1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 tablespoon chia seeds
1/4 cup red beet, peeled and sliced thinly
To make the crust: rinse the quinoa for a minute under cold water. Grind the quinoa into very fine flour in a high speed blender, then in a bowl, mix together the flour with the coco oil and sugar until you get a dough-like mixture. Press into the bottom of a cake pan. I used an adjustable cake pan set to around 7 inches across. Put in the fridge.
To make each layer: simply blend all the ingredients - except the chia seeds - in each list together until smooth, then stir in the chia seeds at the end. The texture before adding the chia seeds should be like yogurt. If any of them are too thick, add 1 or 2 more tablespoons of water. If too thin, add more cashews or coconut oil. Pour in the green layer over your crust, then white, then pink. I sprinkled mine with white sesame seeds and more chia seeds.
Keep the cake in the fridge for 24 hours so the flavours can get to know each other. It's easiest to slice when it's been in the freezer for about 40 minutes before cutting.
SUBSTITUTIONS: You can use rolled oats or buckwheat groats instead of quinoa. Use any other nut instead of cashews, but they should be raw and preferably organic. Use coconut butter or cocoa butter instead of coconut oil. Use date paste or any other natural sweetener instead of coconut sugar. Use berries instead of beet.
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