Vegan strawberry cheesecake (oil-free)
Vegan strawberry cheesecake (oil-free)
Another cheesecake? I hear you say…
I’ve been working on a perfect oil-free cheesecake recipe for so long that now, that I’ve finaly hit the jackpot, I was dying to try other flavours out. As strawberries are in season at the moment, I figured that strawberry cheesecake should be very well received.
Once again, it took a few trials to get the amount of agar agar spot on as strawberries have a surprising amount of water in them, it turns out, but I’ve done it. It’s smooth, creamy, fragrant and very strawberry 🙂 .
This time, I have gone for a fully fledged cake rather than cute individual cheesecakes. As you might have noticed, I like baking small and cute things. I don’t know why that is? I reckon some part of me secretly believes that having one small (teeny weeny) cheesecake is not as bad as having a slice of a big guy. I know it doesn’t make sense, but hey, I often don’t… 😉 so here is a big (ish) cheesecake for you.
CHEESECAKE BASE
- 20 dates / 170 g / 6 oz pitted and soaked in boiling water
- a few pinches of fine salt
- heaped 1 cup / 140 g almonds
- 1½ tbsp raw cacao powder (optional)
CHEESECAKE
- 1 cup / 150 g raw cashews (soaked overnight)
- 600 g / 21 oz RIPE strawberries, de-stemmed (weigh after de-stemming)
- 5-6 tbsp / 75-90 ml maple syrup, adjust to taste
- 7½ level tsp agar agar flakes*
- ½ cup coconut cream*, chilled (from a tin)
- ½ cup reduced aquafaba*
DECORATION (optional)
- chocolate shavings
- fresh strawberries
- Line the bottom of your spring form tin (mine was 16 cm / 6 ” across and 6.5 cm / 2.5 ” tall) with a circle of baking paper and cut out a long rectangle to line the sides with.
CHEESECAKE BASE
- Grind your almonds in a food processor until you get a coarse crumb. Take them out of the food processor and set aside.
- Drain your dates and chop them roughly. Put into a food processor and process into a paste. Add cacao powder and a bit of salt to taste and process some more.
- In a bowl, mix date paste with enough ground almonds to obtain a dough that isn’t too sticky yet still holds together well. I prefer doing it by hand to get a feel for exactly how many almonds I should be adding.
- Line the sides of the baking tin and then mould the base mixture to the bottom of your spring form tin. Press the mixture down well with your fingers so that there are no gaps / air-bubbles. Put a bit if baking paper on top of the base and weigh it down with something heavy (I used a round container of similar size, filled with sugar). Put into the fridge while you make your cheesecake mixture.
CHEESECAKE MIXTURE
- Just before you are ready to start blending the cheesecake, put agar flakes, ½ cup of reduced aquafaba (or water if you don’t want to use aquafaba) and ½ cup of coconut cream into a small pot. Let the mixture come to the boil and simmer on low-medium heat, stirring frequently, until flakes almost dissolve and the mixture thickens (about 15 mins). From that point onwards, you’ll need to work fast as agar sets as soon as it cools down.
- Chuck maple syrup, de-stemmed strawberries and cashews (in this order) into the blender. Blend until smooth. Once smooth add activated agar mixture into a blender. Blend, scraping the sides of the blender from time to time if needed. Adjust the sweetness to taste. Blend until completely smooth.
- As soon as the cheesecake mixture is super smooth, take the spring form tin out of the fridge and pour the cheesecake mixture on top of the set base. Make sure you do it very quickly to get a smooth finish as, like I mentioned before, agar sets very quickly. Gently hit the filled spring form tin against your work surface a few times to get rid of air pockets/bubbles.
- You don’t need to put this cheesecake into the freezer as it will set beautifully at room temperature or in the fridge. Once set, decorate at will.
*COCONUT CREAM: what you need is the solid part of full fat (stabiliser free) coconut milk that floats to the top and solidifies after prolonged (a week is best, 72 hrs at least) chilling. If using coconut milk or tinned coconut cream that tends to include some coconut water, you will need to increase the amount of agar agar used.
**Aquafaba – water from a can of low-sodium chickpeas or from cooking dry chickpeas at home, reduced on the stove to achieve thicker consistency.
All looks very jummy -thank you
Just wondering what can be used as a substitute for nuts and pine nuts - have a severe allergy to it
Thx
As cheesecake has a quite high fat content, it isn't easy to find ingredients that contain that much fat on a vegan diet, which is why cashews are often used. If you can't have those, there is a way to make cheesecake out of tofu or even cooked millet reinforced with some fat (coconut oil or cacao butter) or set with agar agar, but it's not a straightforward swap - it requires recipe development. I will put it on my list and try to come up with a nut free cheesecake for summer. x Ania
I have never used agar powder, but conventional wisdom says that 3 tsp agar flakes equals 1 tsp agar powder, so for this recipe I would use 2½ tsp of agar powder. Hope that helps! Ania
can I replace the aquafaba with something else? maybe more caned coconut milk?!
thanks in advance 🙏🏻🤗
I have not used that product so I'm unsure but if it does what agar / gelatine does then I am sure it could work well, the issue is getting the exact ratios right as I probably differs from agar agar in that respect. You would need to experiment a little, I think. Ania
I'm not sure what they were or whether they are edible, most likely not - I simply went around the garden where we rented our house (so I didn't grow them) and picked a few flowers that looked nice. Ania
I'm so sorry, but I'm travelling and so working on a tiny computer and when I tried to reply to your comment last time, my computer crashed. I don't think the cheesecake tastes of coconut and none of the people who made it (and many did) complained of it, but I guess it depends how sensitive your dad's tastebuds are. Hope that helps! Ania
Fiona
That's a tough one as cashews are key in this recipe. I've read somewhere that macadamias work well too, but I haven't tested that myself as they are very expensive here. Ania
I'm so excited to try this for a friends birthday this weekend!
I'll post photos and hope it turns out well!
I have used agar powder before so I do have some experience with it. I find when using fruits that may have a high acidity (for example if the strawberries are a bit tart) you will need a little more agar powder only because the acid tends to mix badly so simply adding a little more helps!
Also some foods have certain enzymes which can make the gelling slow or not work as well. Apparently cooking the foods first breaks the enzymes down which will then allow the gelling process happen. Hope this helps in the future for some people! It's just trial and error :)
Agar powder is three times as powerful as agar flakes (see NOTES under the recipe) and while it is said to be taste-less and odour-less, I feel that on its own it has a faint algae smell so I would not be surprised if it has had an effect on the flavour, it must have certainly affected the texture. I'm guessing that the cheesecake must have come out quite rubbery. 3 tsp should be sufficient for the next time. Hope that helps! Ania
Its sitting to set in the fridge . I really hope i will end up looking nice as yours when we carve into it. Wish i could post a pic in these replies
Thanks!
Efi
It sets very quickly, which is why you need to act quickly once you've incorporated agar into the mixture to ensure a smooth finish, but I would leave it alone for 30 minutes to be sure it's set all the way through. Hope that helps! Ania
Sorry to ask so many questions! I just want mine to be as beautiful as yours!
No worries at all, here are my answers...Yes, coconut cream is the fatty part of full fat coconut milk that rises to the top after chilling. I would advise against using lite version of coconut milk as it's the fat that gives the cheesecake its typical creaminess. Here is a full post on aquafaba, but for this recipe feel free to use water instead. Aquafaba is optional, water works well too. I have never used guar gum so cannot advise here. Both agar flakes and powder will work but powder is approximately 3 times more potent than flakes so you'll need to adjust the amount used accordingly. Hope that helps and the cheesecake comes out well. Ania
Thank you for the simple and well-explained recipe.
**I also Nominated you** :)
Good Luck!
May I ask what role aquafaba plays here? Since usually it is whipped to achieve fluffiness, but here it is only blended, which should do much?
Thanks.
I would be worried that it may be detectable in the final product as strawberries are quite a delicate flavour. I would simply use water instead :) Ania
Per accident I used to much cashews, but that didn't matter.
Next time I use a bit less agar agar (I used powder instead of flakes, so it was more difficult to make sure the amounts where good)
thanx for the recipe.
I only hope it will turn out ok and look good. I just wondered if you'd heard of the above Vege-gel
I'm excited you are thinking of making my cheesecake! If I remember correctly one of my readers have used that gel instead of agar and then commented that the cheesecake failed to set so I would be wary. Sorry to be a bearer of bad news, but I hope it saves you trouble. Ania
Thanks to the recipe, I plan to make a cake for my birthday next month and maybe I'll try this. I wanted to try agar agar too.
Does the colour of the strawberries stays the same. I tried several times with strawberries and blueberries and they get darker. Do agar prevents them?
Thanks!
As you can see in the photos and in my video, the colour of this cake is pretty pink. I'm not sure whether agar plays a part here. Hope you and your guests will like it if you decide to give it a go! :) Ania
I used regular (small) dates, but Medjool dates will work well too - no need to soak them and you'll probably not need as many! Ania
I am usually not drawn to vegan recipes, but this one looks so good! You have some very beautiful pictures on your blog. I might try this recipe. I love pure strawberry flavor.
Planning on making this beautiful cake for Easter but hoping to make it the day before and just keep it in the fridge until the following day.
Will that be ok? I can make it first thing Easter morning but I'm going to have so much other stuff to do so it will be great if i can get it out of the way the day before.
Can't wait to see how it turns out! I'm not very good at deserts so fingers crossed hehe.
Thanks for this amazing recipe!
Yes, making it one day ahead should be absolutely fine! Good luck! Hope it will go down a treat :) Ania
Thank you for this wonderfull recipe.
We don't have strawberries in season, is it possible to use a different fruit? LIke banana?
Glad to hear that you like the recipe. As for bananas, I'm sure the cheesecake will work but strawberries have much higher water content than bananas so my guess is that you will need to adjust the amount of agar agar or otherwise the cheesecake may end up rock-solid. I halve the amount to begin with. Hope that helps! Ania
I made this cake twice and have received many compliments! Best cake ever!!
But would other fruit works instead? Same amount of grams.. but papaya instead?
Thanks!
I'm so glad you and your guests loved this cake! Believe it or not, I have never used papaya as it's not something I can get here easily so I don't know, but as long as the water content is similar to strawberries it should be fine. It you use less watery fruit, like raspberries or cherries, for example, you will need to adjust the amount of agar a little.
Hope that helps and Happy New Year!
Ania
Thanks, I don't see why not but you'll have to bear in mind that different fruit have different water content and that will affect how much agar you'll need. Strawberries are quite watery. What kind of fruit do you have in mind? Ania
I think that mango, raspberry and blueberry all have a bit less water than strawberries so I would consider reducing the amount of agar, it is however, just a guess as I haven't tried any of these flavours. The best way to do this if you don'y want to waste to much is to do 1/4 of the recipe in a muffin tin just to be sure the fruit flavour comes through enough and that the amount of the setting agent is correct. Hope that helps a little! x Ania
I finally have time to make this cake! I'm going to use 4 gr of agar agar powder on 1 liter of liquid, that suppose to be the perfect amount according to my mom... I'm going to take her advice hihi :D. About the strawberries, are frozen also ok? Of course the strawberrie season is over, but I really want to try it! There are still strawberries but they are not organic!! The only organic strawberries I have are frozen.
Best wishes,
Lucia
I have not made it with anything else other than fresh strawberries, but my instinct is telling me that frozen should work well too. The only concern is the amount of water in the strawberries as this may affect the amount of agar needed but if you make sure you get rid of any excess water once they thawed a little, it should be fine. Good luck and let me know how you got on! :)
Thank you :) You could use pecans, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, dessicated coconut, pistachios - anything goes, really :) x
No, I wouldn't say so. The cheesecake layer tastes predominantly of ginger, there is not much coconut cream in it so not enough to give it coconut taste. Hope you'll like it!
I'm excited to try this and am planning on bringing it tomorrow afternoon to a function. I'm in the process of measuring agar flakes- I measured 11 grams and it is yielding about 15 tsp. Way over 6 1/2 tsp. Is it a typo and supposed to be tbsp? Please advise! I'm using Eden Agar Agar Flakes. Thanks so much- beautiful cake!
Thank you for your prompt reply!
Oh boy, you know- it was gorgeous in the springform, but looked like it never really set and jiggled a little bit like jello. ( I used the 6 1/2 tsps and chilled it for 4 hours.) When I unclasped the pan, it buckled on the sides an upon peeling the parchment, it completely collapsed and spread out, softer than the consistency of pudding. I wonder if the flakes I used were bigger and had more air between them in my measuring. We had strawberry cream pudding for dessert. Not a big hit but I'm not giving up. What kind of Agar did you use?
That's definitely something to do with the quality of agar flakes as I've had many people Instagram me the photo of this very cheesecake and all of them held up beautifully so please do not get discouraged and try again with maybe additional 50% of your agar flakes (9 teaspoons). I used agar flakes by an Italian company ALGAMAR and 6,5 tsp gives me a nice firm but not too firm consistency but possibly yours need a bit more for the same result. It's hard for me to say as the flakes I get are the only ones available here. Good luck and please let me know how it turned out if you dare to try again :)
I like the thought of experimenting with vegan recipes. Thanks for the inspiration! :)
I just wanted to thank you for all these beautiful and inspiring recipes!
I am definitely trying this one! I always loved cheesecake but since I quit
sugar and reduced animal products only to free ranged organic eggs, I never tried
to make one. This is very special to me! Thanks!
xxx Kati
x
Ania