GF Raw Lemon Cheesecake

If you have a food allergy then you’ll know what I mean when I say that learning to deal with a food intolerance/allergy is like dealing with a break up.
At the time it’s horrible – heartbreaking even, you miss them, you can’t imagine a life without them in it and there’s a few times when you cave and crawl back for one final trip down memory lane before you pull yourself together and realise enough is enough and you sever ties completely. Come on we all know what I mean right?

When I found out I couldn’t eat gluten, jesus my life almost stopped, the thought of not being able to order a pizza from Franco Manca in London nearly made me weep. And I’ll hold my hands up I pushed my limits with my intolerances to the point where I was in hospital. But there will be a point where you sit back and you realise that nothing, no matter how tasty is worth the pain, it is because of this that I’m trying to create recipes where just because they’re ‘specialised’ does not mean they don’t taste damn good.

It was like this for me and cheesecake. Undoubtedly the greatest dessert option known to man. Don’t even get me started on a good biscuit base, how long do you have? Now I’m all about that base, if my biscuit to cheese ratio isn’t through the roof then I’m not happy.  And then I had to completely cut out gluten…bye bye biscuits.
Obviously this just couldn’t do, a life without cheesecake is just plain empty so I played around to find a safe alternative. Let me introduce you to my Gluten Free Raw Cheesecake, we got the idea for the base from our Energy Ball Recipe, genius.

What you’ll need

For the base:

– ½ bag of dates
– big bag of mixed nuts
– coconut oil
– teaspoon ground ginger
– cheesecake tin

For the topping:

– 600g soft cheese
– 300g double cream
– vanilla essence
– lemon

What you’ll need to do 

– blitz all the base ingredients together
– the coconut oil is used in exactly the same way as you’d use butter for the biscuit base. It’s the glue to hold it all together so play around to get you desired amount
– grease your tin with some of the coconut oil
– spread your base mix into the tin and firmly pat down_
– place in the fridge for an hour to firm up
– in a large bowl add your cheese, cream and juice from your lemon as well as some drops of vanilla essence and whisk together
– when all mixed and thick transfer onto your base and spread evenly
– leave in the fridge for a few hours to ‘set’ so to speak
– then cut yourself a huge piece and Enjoy.

This is such a simple recipe to follow, as long as you use this as a basic guide you can change it to try out different flavours, how about smashing up some blueberries and adding to the cheese? See living with a food intolerance doesn’t have to be bland. Times are changing and our food choices are just getting better and tastier.