My First Attempt at a Raw Cake

Day 1

Once I borrowed the book “Rawsome” from the library and then it went mysteriously missing. Days after I finally paid the insane late fee, which was surely at least 3x the value of the book, it turned up. Typical. That was a year ago, and I have yet to cook one recipe from said book. Until now. Enter the dehydrator: My mom sent it to me, I was so excited, but it’s taken me a month to actually open the box. Finally I have, and the first thing it will be used for is the “Amazing Cake” from “Rawsome.” Sadly, I’m such an impatient cook and all of the raw recipes that require a dehydrator generally look like this: Soak x-nut over night. Dehydrate for 12 hours. Blend with a, b and c ingredient. Dehydrate for 12 hours. And so on. A 2 day process to make dessert! I grew up melting chocolate chips in the microwave and dipping pretzels in them for dessert, so needless to say, I’m more of an instant gratification kinda gal. But here I am, attempting something new. Almonds a-soakin’.

Soaking Almonds

Day 1, part 2

Almonds have soaked, it’s time to dehydrate! After much examination, it turns out this machine is so simple, all I do is plug it in and it starts. Here we go.

Almonds Dehydrating

Day 2

So I decided to do the soaking during the day, the dehydrating overnight so that I could make the dessert in the morning. I now understand why all the recipes suggest that you soak the almonds overnight and then dehydrate. That thing is not quiet. It is also against my nature to leave an appliance on all night long, but I keep telling myself, “it’s a dehydrator! It’s for raw foodies and other eco-conscious people! It must be somehow not an energy waster…?” (I don’t want to do any research to find out the contrary.)

Here are my dehydrated almonds:

Dehydrated Almonds

I have yet to understand why I actually soaked and then dehydrated them, but I’m sure there is some nutritious explanation.

I should note at this point, that technically this dessert is not totally raw. Had I gone out and bought raw cacao powder and not used vanilla extract, it would be. And I’m sure it wouldn’t be that different. Actually I’m just remembering that I had planned to grind up the raw cacao nibs I’ve had sitting in my cupboard for months to use as raw cacao powder but obviously forgot. Oh well.

I soaked the dates (a surprisingly short 20 minutes, compared to the almonds).

Dates Soaking

Then I used the food processor I “borrowed” from my dad to blend up the crust. Sadly, I have to admit, that while the Vitamix can do a lot of amazing things, blending up dough/crust/thick things etc is much, much easier in the large bowl of a food processor. Sorry, Vitamix, I guess you can’t do everything better than anyone else, but close. That being said, even with the food processor I had to blend the crust in batches and open it regularly to dislodge a chunk from the blade. As I was blending and digging, blending and digging, it became pretty clear that this recipe was probably too labor intensive for my regular cooking preferences. But it’s still fun to experiment!

Blending the Crust

After the crust was fully blended, (although I didn’t manage to “puree” it, as the recipe recommended), I smushed it into a dish, then covered it with sliced strawberries.

Crust

Crust with Strawberries

Then I blended the top layer. I’m really not sure what this was supposed to look like, or what consistency it should have had, because at this point I pretty much stopped measuring. It came out kind of moist and crumbly at the same time, and had a flavor similar to that of chalva (probably because the main ingredient was tahini). I spread this over the berries and officially finished my first (almost) raw dessert!

Amazing Cake!

Inside the Cake

Even though it was only 10am, I had to taste.

Slice o’ Cake

Just a sliver.

Supermega delicious. Quite possibly worth all the time and effort, which, in retrospect, wasn’t all that much.