My friend once brought me home a slice of vegan cheesecake that had been served at a dinner party she went to (we were the worst students.) It was amazing — made with advocado, tofu and limes. It was somehow creamy, tasty and (despite the fact it was green) beautiful.
I really wanted to try something like this out for myself, so I found a recipe that looked to be a pretty good approximation of what I had tried; I bought all the ingredients and dilligently followed.
It was a complete disaster. The base was OK (what can go wrong with crushed biscuits?) but I couldn’t make the topping resemble anything other than green scrambled eggs. Part of the problem was that I don’t have a blender of any sort (although I really did try with a potato masher) and I think I also bought the wrong type of tofu.
So, I had a lovely biscuit base with nothing to go on top. I had very little in the cupboards (I’ve just moved into a new flat!), but fortunately (oddly) I did have a lot of fresh tropical fruit. I basically mushed up some mangoes and kiwis, and then heated them up with creamed coconut and sugar. Here is the recipe:
Ingredients
300g creamed coconut (1 and a half blocks)
300g of ginger biscuits (they tend to be dairy free)
100g caster sugar
2 tbsp margerine (I used Pure Soya)
2 limes
1 lemon
1 large mango
4 kiwis
- Crush the biscuits into crumbs. It’s worthwhile taking your time over this, to make sure there’s no lumps left. I put the biscuits in a zip-lock bag and smashed them up with a hardback book.
- Heat margerine and 100g of creamed coconut gently in a pan. Add crushed biscuits and mix together. Press the resulting biscuit mix into a 9 inch baking tin.
- Peel and chop the kiwis and mango. Leave aside some segments to decorate, and then mash together the fruit (again, I used a potato masher, I imagine a blender on a low setting would work better), don’t worry about remaining lumps. Gives texture.
- Finely grate the zest from one of the limes, and squeeze the juice from both limes and the lemon.
- Heat 200g of creamed coconut in a pan until it’s all melted, add the sugar, lime & lemon juices and zest, and the other mushed fruit.
- Leave this gently simmering on the heat, stirring regularly, for 10 minutes.
- Pour the mixture onto the biscuit base, leave to cool and then put in the freezer to set.
Take out of the freezer and put into the fridge 2 hours before serving (else it’s impossible to slice.)
