Project Valentine's Day

Project Valentine's Day was something I coined a few weeks before the big day. I knew right away that I wanted to make something lavish for Kelli. She deserves it...and lots more! I had a vision in my head, and of course not all visions come to fruition lol. Nonetheless, Project Valentine's Day was a success! What did I make you ask? A box of chocolates and a heart shaped cake!

The box of chocolates was an easy one to conceptualize. Chocolate is rather an easy thing to make. A little cacao, agave and ground nuts, you have yourself a winner!

I bought an empty heart shaped box and little paper guys from a restaurant supply store. I headed off to Chef Dara's (http://live-love-raw.blogspot.com/) house to get to work. When I arrived, long behold she had "caramel" already prepared in her fridge. Perfect! I went ahead and started with the cake while she prepared the chocolate dough.

Once the cake was in a stage where it had to sit in the freezer, I rolled little balls of chocolate and caramel. It was easy to get creative. Some were stuffed with dried cranberries, others were plain chocolate rolled in cacao or coconut flakes. I added pecans to a few as well.

Once I was done playing with the dough, I put them in the wrappers and placed the whole box in the freezer so it would keep longer :).

The real project was the heart shaped cake! At first I thought about making a triple layer chocolate cake. Kind of sounds like the Shawn White's Double McTwist 1260 in the halfpipe Olympic competition, a nearly impossible feat for the average person.

Dara handed me a raw dessert bible, Cafe Gratitude's Sweet Gratitude. Those guys have it down! If you haven't been to a Cafe Gratitude, GO!!!! Eat any one of their desserts or milkshakes and you'll be flying high through the clouds for the next day or two.

I flipped through the book and landed on a Strawberry Shortcake. How appropriate!!! It was broken into two parts, cake and filling. The basis for the cake consisted of 24oz of dates to 8C of grounded nuts (or nut flour). In this case I used almonds, the queen of nuts. The filling was a cashew cream (cashews, agave, coconut oil, vanilla) with chopped strawberries.

What was interested was that in the book it called to use a mixer to mix the dough. Perhaps in the "cooked" world of food, a standard household has a mixer. I've never heard of using a mixer in the raw food world. Well, we were short a mixer so my hands had to do the work! After about 20 minutes of massages, you can only imagine what my hands and arms felt like. With each minute the dough was getting more dense. It was rather sticky so I knew I had to had something of a powder form, be it more ground almonds or another form of powder. I choose powdered coconut. This worked really well!

I then divided the dough in half, one for the bottom layer and one for the top layer. I put a few drops of coconut oil on the bottom of the heart shaped spring form pan to keep the dough from sticking. I shaped the dough on the bottom of the pan and pressed it down firmly.

Next up was the cashew cream. I wish I could remember what all exactly was in there but I only remember the few mentioned above. This was created using the Vitamix. It tasted so good!

I poured half of the cashew cream over the dough. I reserved the other half to use as a frosting. I placed chopped strawberries in the cream. Next, I placed the pan in the freezer to allow the cashew cream to set. It took about an hour to get to the point where I could work with the top layer.

Traffic on the 405 was building up so I had to leave Dara a nice mess in the kitchen and hit the road. I took my project on the road! 50 minutes later, I got home and immediately placed the cake in the freezer.

The next day I removed the pan from the freezer, I had to shape the top layer. It's kind of difficult to shape a cake layer on top of a cream so I pre-shaped it. I did this by making rounding and flattening the dough, to about the thickness I wanted, on a cutting board. I placed pan on top and pressed down. This acted like a cookie cutter. I just removed the outside and voila!..another heart shaped layer. I placed the layer on top of the cashew cream and filled in the gaps with the dough pieces I removed earlier.

I had leftover dough so I used those in the box of chocolates as well :).

I let the whole thing sit in the freezer overnight because I didn't want Kelli to see.

I took it out of the freezer and prepared to frost it. This is where cake decorating skills would come in handy! I've never frosted a cake so only you could imagine! Yikes!!!!! My sister got the decorating genes, I just all the math stuff.

Dara suggested using beet juice to dye the cashew cream pink to use as a frosting. Great idea Dara! I microplaned a little beet and strained it through a nut milk bag. Pure juice! This works perfect if you only have to use a little juice. It's easier than setting up your juicer and having to clean it all.

I reblended the cashew cream frosting and while it was blending I added a little beat juice until I got the color I wanted. It was a nice light pink :). I used this to frost the cake. Not so fun! I think the trick is to use a lot of frosting, freeze it, use more frosting, freeze it, then shape it. I'm sure Meagan would disagree though; she's the resident pastry expert! That was just my logic given the experience I had.

After frosting the cake, I realized that I didn't do a very good job, expecially on the top part. I was not happy whatsoever so I covered it up with chopped strawberries :). At first I was just making a mess everywhere....but then it started to come together.


After I laid all the chopped strawberries on top I decided to add a little more flare. I piped the outline of the heart with a darker shade of the frosting. Note to self: freeze frosting after blending or it'll turn into liquid quickly and make a mess!

Don't ask me why but I added sliced strawberries across the sides and piped those as well. Not fun when strawberries are sliding down off the cake.

Finally, I was done!

KELLI LOVED IT. Or at least she gave me that impression hehe. The cake tasted fantastic! I still have a little left ;-). She also loved the box of chocolates! Her favorite was one made from all chocolate and powdered in cacao.

Piece of cake!

Chocolate Cake with Love

I was in the middle writing a post about Omega 3 fatty acids and realized I can write a book on this. Nutrition can seem so complicated but I treat it like a puzzle. It's facinating. Better save it for another day. Today we're talking about chocolate cake.

Yesterday I woke up inspired to make a raw cake. I had visions in my head simliar to what I've seen Chef Meagan create at Living Light. Every time I blinked I saw cake. I wasn't going to let anything get in my way. I packed up my tools and some ingredients and I spent the afternoon at Chef Dara's house, founder of Live, Love, Raw.

I planned on follwing a recipe then decorating it with a piping bag. Once I got to Dara's, I realized I forgot a few things so essentially had to come up with this on my own, but with a few guidelines found in recipe books. Oh, I also forgot my 9" springform pan...doh!

The cake started off with almond flour and data paste. WOW...who doesn't love date paste, seriously?! Date paste is easy to make, just throw in a bunch of unpitted dates into the food processer and add water until your desired consistancy. Kelli and I used to put it on Mana Bread with almond butter...yum!

Ok, back to the recipe (which I didn't write down). So, I mixed the date paste with the almond flour by massaging it with my hands. I added some cinnamon and cacao powder. I divided the dough in two.

I was envisioning a two layer cake. Like date paste, who doesn't love cashew cream?!!! Dara had attempted cashew cheese but I think the little bacteria guys fell asleep the night before because the cheese was not fermented. Nonetheless, I was able to utilize the "cheese" and convert it to a cream. I did this by adding vanilla bean powder, agave nectar, coconut oil and a pinch of salt.

My next layer was thinly sliced strawberries. WOWZA.

I covered the strawberries with a layer of cake and frosted it with a chocolate frosting which was made from cacao, agave and coconut oil and voila! Done!

All and all, I believe I used about 7C of almonds, which was eventually processed into flour, ummmmm...20 dates to create date paste?....1/2 pint of straberries? I should have written this down as I went. Bad Chef!

There was a moment, or two, in which I had no idea what I was doing. Food has a habit of talking to me. Ask a Chef. Dara had a lovely heart shaped fluted pan that I was able to utilize in place of my springform. I layered 1/2 of the cake dough into the bottom of the pan. At this point, Dara had left to pick up her daughter from school. The next hour was spent in serenity. I spread a layer of cashew cream on top. I put the whole thing in the freezer to have the cream set (coconut oil has a melting temperature of 76degrees F). Now, I should had let it sit longer but I had to finish up or I was never going to beat traffic on the way home. I took it out of the freezer only after 20 minutes or so. Actually, I don't even think it was that long. Ok, so try to picture a heart shaped pan half full of dough and cream. How was I layer another dough mixture on top without disturbing the cream and making a mess?...alas, I knew engineering school would pay off eventually lol. I laid the dough out and made a circle, sort of. I placed the heart shaped pan on top of my circle and just removed the edges. I peeled the dough off the bottom of the pan and came out with a beautiful, heart shaped layer of dough. Before placing it on top of the cream, I thinly sliced strawberries created 1 layer on top of the cream. I took the heart shaped layer, placed it on top and filled in the gaps. It was coming to fruition. I removed the sides of the heart shaped pan by pushing up from the bottom. Next came the frosting. Looooots of love frosting the heart cake. I gently frosted the cake on all sides and when I was done I put it back in the freezer. Again, should have let it sit for 2 hours but traffic was already building up on the 405.

Dara came home with a special guest, Richard, about 2 minutes after I put the cake in the freezer. There was a huge mess in her kitchen so I felt the need to display the cake. They both fell in love with the look. The question was...how did it taste?! Well, Richard had two pieces, Dara and I each had one. My mind was just processing so fast while I was eating this. It was like the Matrix where you just see 0's and 1's flashing on the screen. I was just not happy with it. Then again, I'm rarely happy with any dish I make. Why is that? Perhaps I should stop being too critical. I know my taste buds are drastically different than the average american.

I took the remaining cake home and FINALLY got to freeze it for over an hour. Kelli ate a piece, then ate another and another. I didn't get why she loved it so much and I hadn't so I decided to try a piece after it had set in the freezer. WOWZA it was goooooood!...so tonight I had another 3 pieces lol.

My sequencing is a little off here but let's revert back to Richard eating the cake. He asked me how much saturated fat and cholesterol was in that piece he was eating. Again, 0's and 1's flashing through my mind. The answer has yet to be determined but I can approximate it. Cholesterol = 0! Cholesterol is only formed in animals. It is not found in plant based foods. Saturated Fat = about 6g.

How did I come up with that? Well, 1C of raw almonds contains about 5g sat fat. I used about 7C worth. The cake can easily be divided into about 16-20 pieces. Therefore, 7*5=35g and 35/16 = 2.2g. I only used 1/4C of coconut oil. That contains about 47g sat fat. That sounds like a lot but I'll explain the whole Fat issue in a later post. Ok...so given that logic, add in another 3g sat fat per slice. Maybe 1g for the cashew cream, so all in all, we're talking about 6g sat fat per slice. I believe the recommended daily allowance is about 20g. Each slice also contained about 14g protein. There was a ton of sugar in each slice too!...the dates alone contribute about 20g per slice, then factor in the agave....so perhaps 25g sugar per slice.

Here are some pics! Enjoy!