Okay so here's the sitch; I have made many vegan 'cheesecakes' in my life, some of which feature on this very blog, and while I like to think they've all generally been fairly tasty, I've also been lying to myself for they were not real cheesecakes. What then makes a cheesecake real? Well, cheese.
I know what you're thinking - if it's cheese that a cheesecake needs then I can take my resolutely vegan self elsewhere because cheese-containing cheesecake the vegans cannot have (for obvious reasons). WRONG. The world is (sometimes) a good place, and there exists vegan cream cheese and it is hands down the greatest thing that has, or will, happen to humanity. By itself, I must confess I don't much fancy this vegan cream cheese, but add a few things, click your fingers three times, be visited in the middle of the night by the elves of Narnia, and you too can take this vegan cream cheese and turn it into the holy grail of decadent vegan desserts - the mighty New York Cheesecake!
I'm just kidding, you don't need to bother with the clicking your fingers three times nonsense or the elves (however fun and interesting it would be if cooking did indeed happen that way!). All you need is a blender, a few ingredients that you can source at most good grocery stores and you'll have yourself a slice - nay, a WHOLE DAMN CAKE - worth of the most delicious dessert on earth.
Let's talk about the details here. New York Cheesecake - what's that, why is it New York? Well, my researching of the interwebs reliably informs me that amongst cheesecake enthusiasts (*puts hand up*), New York Cheesecake is the preeminent kind of cheesecake. It originates from, as you might have guessed, the city of New York in the big old United States of America and the thing that sets it apart from all other kinds of cheesecake is its reliance on cream cheese. You can make a cheesecake with many things, but in the words of the ever reliable Wikipedia, "...the typical New York Cheesecake is rich and has a dense, smooth and creamy consistency [because] it relies heavily upon...cream cheese." Alright Wikipedia, challenge accepted.
Using this magic vegan cream cheese wizardry that I found in my local supermarket, along with some old favourites from the pantry, I created the most rich, the most dense, the most smooth and the most creamy cheesecake EVER. Jazzed up with some zesty lemon, served with fresh summer berry compote and devoured in mere seconds by yours truly, I think it's probably up there with the best things to ever come out of my kitchen. The moral of the story? Vegans can have cheesecake (as in actual cheesecake) and eat it too and you need this wildly tasty New York Cheesecake in your life!
Ingredients;
The Pastry
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup icing sugar
125gm vegan butter (I used Nuttelex)
1. Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180 degrees celsius.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, icing sugar and vegan butter.
3. Using clean hands, rub the vegan butter through the flour and icing sugar. It takes a bit of mixing, but eventually you should start to see things begin to form a dough-like mixture. Keep at it, mixing things through with your hands and working the butter and vanilla into the dry ingredients. Eventually you should end up with a big ball of yellow dough that you can roll around in your hands without it sticking to you. If things are still sticky, add in a bit more flour.
4. Clean down a table top and sprinkle it with some flour. Take a rolling pin (I like to wrap mine in cling-film/gladwrap) to prevent sticking, otherwise more flour also works) and plonk your dough down in the middle. Gently roll it out into a large circle big enough to fit a round cake tin (I use a 20cm diameter tin, but you can work with whatever size you have).
5. Use some coconut oil to grease up the insides of the cake tin so that your pastry won't stick.
6. Likely with some difficulty (apologies, not all things are easy in life), carefully lift the rolled out dough off the table top and transfer it into the tin. If the dough splits or tears, fret not, you can use leftover bits to fix things up. Alternatively you can skip the rolling part and just manually push the dough into the tin, but I like to roll it so I get a more even coverage. Make sure you have a fairly even thickness on the base and sides of the tin, then cut off any excess you have.
7. Use a fork to gently score the bottom of the tart - don't score the whole way through because you don't want holes! Basically you're trying to create a bit of texture on the base to give the filling something extra to stick to rather than a totally smooth surface!
8. Cover the unbaked tart with some baking paper and then put some baking weights into the tin so the dough doesn't rise in the middle. You can get fancy ball things from baking shops for this, but being the inventive student that I am, I just use some rice.
9. Bake the tart shell for approx. 20 minutes, or until the sides start to lightly brown. At that point, remove the baking weights and allow the tart to cook uncovered for a further 5-10 or so minutes.
10. Remove the tart shell from the oven when its lightly brown and the base of the tart is cooked, and not dough-ey to touch. Allow to cool before putting the filling in!
The Filling
225gm vegan cream cheese (I used 'Sheese' Cream Cheese, Tofutti would also work well!)
1 cup raw cashews
1 cup coconut cream
2 tsp vanilla essence
4 tbsp pure maple syrup
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1. Take a small bowl and put your cashews in there. Cover them with boiling water and allow to soak for an hour or two. Afterwards, drain them and rinse with cold water.
2. Place the cream cheese, soaked cashews, coconut cream, vanilla, maple syrup, lemon zest and juice into a blender. Blend on medium-high speed for several minutes. I like to taste test after at this stage, and depending on my tastes that day might add some extra lemon zest for tartness or some more maple syrup for sweetness. Blend for a few more minutes until you have a completely smooth mixture (no grittiness from the cashews is the key thing to look out for!).
3. Pour the filling into your cooled pastry shell, then cover and put in the fridge overnight to firm up.
The following day, remove the cheesecake from the fridge. Overnight it should have cooled and now should be reasonably firm to the touch. I like to serve mine with a simple mixed berry compote (literally some mixed berries simmered with a tiny dash of water), but fresh berries or really any other fruit that takes your fancy would work well too! Serve straight from the fridge, and store the leftovers (ha! Not a thing that exists in my life personally), if you have any, covered in the fridge. Hypothetically it should last a few days, but I've not tested the longevity of the cheesecake out myself.
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