Raw Vegan Summertime Strawberry Cheezecake

The new toy

To commemorate the first official weekend of summer, we decided to do…nothing super special. We hung around the house, completed some tasks on the ol’ to do list, played around with our brand spankin’ new camera (above) and watched some Euro Cup football (soccer to you Westerners ). It was a perfect weekend!

Micko posin'. He had a great weekend too.

I often get too excited about the arrival of the weekend, and plan way too many things. Sometimes, I don’t have a choice and events happen that I want to go to. Other times, it’s all my doing. This causes weekend burnout, and come Sunday night, I can’t believe I didn’t restore before the coming work week.

We didn’t have much hope for a fun weekend when on Saturday morning, our kitchen faucet broke off in my hand. It was very old, and very calcified from years of hard water running through it.

Gross, broken kitchen tap.

After much struggling under the sink, the husband and I went to Home Hardware to buy a new faucet. We found out that ours was under a lifetime warranty from the company, and HH gave us the parts for free to replace the handle ourselves!

This weekend in wellness included a great yoga practice on Saturday morning and a ZWOW #11 on Sunday. I typically don’t do these kinds of workouts, but I felt like doing something quick and fun with the husband. We decided to do it during the England-Italy game half-time. It was over so quickly, and we laughed through most of it. That’s my kind of workout

Ever since I went to The Coup in Calgary, I’ve wanted to recreate the dessert I had there and post it on the blog. I was able to successfully remake it at home, but wanted to try another run before posting the recipe. Unfortunately for you, I haven’t remade it since then. Fortunately for you, though, I did make a strawberry version today with fresh, local, Ontario strawberries ‘Tis the season!

Summertime Strawberry Cheezecake

Crust Ingredients

3/4 cup raw almonds

3/4 cup pitted dates

1/4-1/2 tsp sea salt

Cheeze Filling Ingredients

2 cups raw cashews, soaked for min. 6hrs

2.5 cups strawberries

2 lemons, juiced

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 Tbsp raw honey (or agave nectar for vegans)

1. Soak the cashews for 6 hours, or simply over night. Drain, rinse and drain well again.

2. In a food processor (or high powered blender), process the almonds until they are a crumbly powder. Add the dates and salt, and process until a sticky, homogeneous mixture results.

3. Press the crust mixture into a 9” (although 7” would be better) spring-form pan. Rinse the processor.

4. Process the cashews until they form a cream, or a big white ball. Add the lemon juice, vanilla extract and melted (on very low) raw honey (or agave).

5. Process to get beautiful cashew cream. Take half of the mixture and put it on top of your crust in the pan.

6. Add clean strawberries (minus the tops) to the processor, and blend until you get a cream again.

7. Add the resulting strawberry layer to the pan.

8. Put in freezer for at least 2 hours, preferably 4 hours to firm up.

9. Garnish, slice, eat!

It’s super straightforward, delicious (and nutritious!) and has a small list of ingredients. Check ‘em out all lined up on my deck for a photoshoot with the new camera.

The crust mixture should look a little like this once finished processing:

When you attempt to press the crust, keep wetting your hands to help you through it. Dry hands cause the date mixture to stick and lift back up, away from the pan.

Crust, pressed into pan

Soak your cashews so they soften.

Get those strawberries ready for consumption. Is there anything better than in-season strawberries? No?

Pure decadence

Aah, the sweet taste of success. Yum!

Go ahead, have a slice!

And the best part? It’s guilt-free! While, yes, cashews have calories (if you count such a thing - I don’t), this cake is full of healthy, complete, whole foods. They are also raw, which is said to preserve their vital nutrients and enzymes. This cake is a great alternative to the traditional, super high in fat, low in fiber, high in sugar cheesecake.

Love your body, feed it fuel. Healthy things can taste great too – you just have to believe. Or make it and check

A yoga for runners post is up next. ‘Till tomorrow,

Much love and Namaste,

Kris