Raw Raspberry Almond Mousse Cake
A Decadent Raw Cake that tastes good both room temp and frozen
I love the creative license involved in making raw things. You don't get caught up in the chemistry of it all. Did I add too much baking soda, too little flour, too much brown sugar? All of these questions plus 1000 other ones like it plagued me while I wrote my first baking book. It's sometimes more complicated and rigid than I want it to be, but those questions are necessary to make sure the dang cake actually rises. But ahh, the sweet simplicity of raw cakes completely removes all scientific equations from the board. This cake was a pleasure to make after months of measuring and weighing everything under the sun. Instead I just followed my intuition, pulverizing, dumping, pressing, topping, and freezing. If you can't tell already, this is a recipe that is about feeling your way through it. It was Eric's birthday cake back on August 19th (shout out to all the cusp babies!). So it was an indulgent one, and not the cheapest, although I'm sure you can scale down the size of the cake from a 9" to something more like a 5" especially if it's no one's birthday around you and you can't find a good excuse to keep such a large cake in the freezer for one (although I'd have no issues with this myself...) Using the already ground cashew and almond butter makes my life so easy, and is also why the consistency of the cake is mousse-y at room temperature. It's soft, creamy, and pretty irresistible. For Eric's bday we partied hard, I invited 6 of his best friends (for life) into town, and we had so much to do we didn't even have time to eat cake--which is crazy for me. The day they all flew out, we flew to Italy, and continued celebrating together. Somehow we ended up in Amsterdam, but that's an entirely different blog post I need to write about! Basically the cake stayed nice and frozen, awaiting our return. For the cake I bought and used:
1 cup raw almonds
1 cup of raw hazelnuts
12 medjool dates, pitted (if they're already soft there's no need to soak)
Virgin coconut oil (in liquid form)
1, 16-ounce jar of raw cashew butter
1, 16 ounce jar of raw almond butter ( 1 only used 3/4 of the jar)--be sure to mix the jar before using
Maple syrup to sweeten about 1/4 cup
2, 15 ounce cans of full fat coconut milk, chilled and the liquid discarded
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
2, 6 ounce containers of fresh raspberries
Cacao powder about 1/2 cup
sea salt to taste
You just need a food processor or high powered blender and a 9" springform pan. Make the crust: In the food processor, combine the raw hazelnuts and almonds, and sea salt to taste, and pulse until coarsely chopped. Add 1 tbsp of coconut oil, and 5 of the pitted dates, and continue to process until the mixture comes together, but there are still coarse pieces of the chopped nuts. Press the crust into the bottom of the springform pan bringing it up only about an inch on the sides. Set aside. Make the filling: In a blender of food processor, combine the cashew butter, almond butter, remainder of the pitted dates, vanilla, almond extract, and salt to taste(optional). Blend until the mixture is smooth. Add in maple syrup or more to thin and sweeten, you can also add more coconut oil to thin as well. Once the mixture is combined, add in the chilled coconut cream from the cans of coconut milk and blend just until combined, trying not to melt the cream. The mixture should be thick and whipped once done. Add half the mixture to the springform pan with the crust. Smooth the top, and crumble in 1 of the containers of the fresh raspberries in an even layer. Top with the other half of the filling, smooth the top, decorate with the other container of raspberries, cover the cake, and then freeze overnight. When ready to serve, combine the cacao powder with enough coconut oil to liquify it. Sweeten it with maple syrup. The mixture should be thin enough to drizzle. If not, add more coconut oil, and then drizzle over the cold cake. Either bring to room temperature or eat frozen. Enjoy!