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Today I made a special recipe for my friend’s birthday. A vegan cheesecake with vegan graham cracker crust and blueberry rooibos compote. When trying to impress friends and especially non-vegans, having a great vegan comfort food treat can be a little daunting, but trust me this recipe is easy.
Since I have never made a vegan cheesecake before, and the last time I made actual cheesecake was almost a decade a go, I decided to look online and see what I could find. My friend requested an almond-lemony flavoured cheesecake, and what do you know? I found one here. It uses firm silken tofu and Tofutti better than cream cheese. With the almond extract and fresh lemon juice, it really tastes nice, and I could not detect any tofu flavour at all. I made the recipe almost exactly as the post, but the only firm silken tofu I could find was by Mori-nu and it comes in a 12 oz size and not 14 oz. It seemed fine and enough filling anyways for the cheesecake.
The cheesecake part was very easy, since I had a Vitamix and I could just combine everything and blend. I still blended a little longer than normal for good measure, just to be sure there was no sugar granules or chunks of corn starch.
The hard part of this recipe was that there are no vegan graham crackers (they contain honey) or crusts at Whole Foods in Vancouver, BC I could find. So I had to do it old school and make my own graham crackers… I’ve never even made any crackers before… so here’s how what I did…
I found a recipe here for vegan graham crackers and smores. I didn’t know how much of the recipe I would need for the crust, so I made the whole thing. But now I know I could have halved or even thirded the recipe since I now have a lot of extra graham crackers. I froze them for later in case I need a dessert crust again.
You definitely DO NOT need to make a crust for vegan cheesecake, your recipe will be much lower in fat if you don’t, since I can’t see any way to make a fat free or low fat pie crust. The graham crumbs are held in by Earth Balance, which is a highly processed food so I don’t recommend making this recipe regularly, just for special occasions like birthdays and holidays for your friends and family. My friend likes graham cracker crusts so that’s why I made it.
A note about the graham cracker recipe if you make it, I wouldn’t bake them so long. My crackers were baked for the full time and were SO freaking hard. Like dangerous to chew hard. It took me forever to break them down in the food processor. I should have used the Vitamix instead, but it had the cream cheese filling in it. But it took forever to get down to crumbs. It would barely crush with my stone rolling pin! Try baking 30-35 minutes only. They don’t need to be totally firm when you take them out, they will solidify. And if you roll them too thin they will turn too brown and burn. The texture is not that great for eating, as it’s a little gritty, but if you’re into whole wheat treats you might not mind.
Now on to the part where my recipe comes in. Earlier this week some friends and I had a vegan tea cook off and I made a blueberry rooibus tea compote for my raw banana ice-cream made with Provence rooibus tea. It was very delicious, I decided to replicate it again for this cheesecake.
Here’s the recipe:
Plant Based Blueberry Rooibus Tea Compote
Ingredients:
3 cups frozen blueberries
1/2 cup blueberry rooibos tea or other rooibos tea (steeped at double strength)
3-4 tbsp granulated sugar, maple syrup, honey, or vegan honey
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Directions:
1. Add 1 1/2 cups of the blueberries, the tea, sugar and lemon juice and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes.
2. Add the remaining blueberries and cook for another 6-8 minutes.
3. Taste test and adjust to your liking, add more sugar for more sweet, or more tea for less sweet.
4. Serve over vegan cheesecake, ice-cream, yogurt, and more.
My suggestion for a healthier decadent vegan treat would be to serve this compote like I originally did, over fat free banana ice-cream made in the Vitamix or a juicer. Then it’s completely fat and guilt-free.
My rooibos banana ice-cream was:
1/2 cup Provence rooibos tea (steeped at double strength)
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 frozen bananas (make sure your bananas are ripe, see my post here about how to tell if bananas are ripe)
You’ll need a Vitamix to make this, or let the banana thaw a little bit and slice into small pieces for your regular blender or food processor. Add the tea and extract and then the bananas. Turn the Vitamix onto 5 and use the tamper to push it down and cream the bananas. Continue pushing it all down until it’s blended evenly. This should take no more than 30-60 seconds, since you don’t want your ice-cream to start melting.
Serves 2 large servings, 4-6 small dessert servings.
Let me know what you think!
Update!
I made this vegan cheesecake again crustless and with the same blueberry sauce but without the rooibos tea. If you make the vegan cheesecake crustless, make sure you spray some cooking spray on the bottom of your dish! Mine would not come out, so it was messy. Also the blueberry sauce was rather 1 dimensional. I really missed the subtle complex flavours left by the fruity blueberry rooibus tea. So I really hope you will try it. It will not be the same if you get another kind of blueberry tea, like green tea because it’s less fragrant.
Hi! I’m going to try this recipe today. Just thought I’d tell you that if you are looking for a low fat crust recipe (also raw!!!), try blending dates with dried mulberries. The mulberries are so biscuity and yum! You could probably add dried figs too
Cool thank you for sharing! Mulberries a bit expensive in canada but a neat suggestion.
Just found your site and am excited about it. What is rooibus and where can you buy it?
Rooibos (it’s pronounced Roy bus) is an african “tea” but it is made without tea leaves and is very fruity and fragrant. You can get it in MANY many flavours if you go to a tea shop that sells loose tea. It would have to be at a trendy tea shop, it won’t be found in China Town tea markets as they don’t use it. But even Starbucks and Whole Foods have a vanilla rooibus tea that you can buy by the cup.
You can get blueberry rooibus on Amazon here. Teavena has some great pictures and selections of rooibos tea on their website.
Maybe you could make a healthier crust using buckwheat /amaranth/quinoa flour. Also I know you can make savoury crusts using cooked brown rice and very little fat (usually a little ground nuts). don’t know if the texture would work for a sweet, especially a cheesecake. There is a very good savoury pie crust here http://www.grainfreeliving.com/recipes/breads/78-besan-flour-vegan-pastry Wonder if it could be adapted for a sweeter one. maybe add in some blended dates? I’m sure you could make a very nice crust using ground nuts – it wouldn’t be low fat, but it would be less processed. Pie crusts are hard to make vegan from whole ingredients – I avoid grains too so it’s almost impossible.
Yes emily, you can use ground nuts, but then you have a massively fatty recipe when it has tofu cream cheese in it as well. So I do not use nut crusts ever, too fatty, too rich, too hard to digest. I have made this recipe without the crust as well. Just spray the bottom of the pie plate with non stick spray and pour the mixture in and let it set over night. My friend wanted a crust for her birthday so it was a special occasion thing.
Veronica, thank you so much for making this awesome vegan cheesecake for my birthday! It was *H*E*A*V*E*N*L*Y !!! 😀 😀 😀
You’re very welcome!
Veronica this looks fab! Wish I could eat it … 😉