This is one of those keeper recipes - you know, the kind you can easily adapt to the season - which never fails to "wow" appreciative guests. It's a simple raw, vegan, creamy chocolate cheesecake - and this particular version uses fresh figs and walnuts. But you can easily swap the figs for apricots, raspberries, poached pears or poached citrus - depending on what is at your local market at the time. 

It's a recipe on a regular rotation in our house. Hopefully you'll like it as much as we do! 

You can see the two separate layers here - one is white chocolate and one is palest pink chocolate.

But this isn't as complicated as it sounds, because the base mixture is the same, and one half simply has cacao added to it at the end. Sort of a cheat's way perhaps - but it makes it a bit fancy without involving a lot of time. 

White Chocolate Cheesecake with Fig & Walnuts

Base Ingredients

• 200 gm dried figs
• 1/2 cup almonds (skins on)
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 3 tablespoons raw cacao
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1 cup buckini

Base Method

• Combine figs, almonds, walnuts, cacao & cinnamon in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until crumbly. Drizzle coconut oil & maple syrup in through feeder tube, and mix until combined. Stop the machine, remove the lid & tip the buckini on top of the mixture evenly. Replace lid and whiz in short bursts until just combined. Press mixture into a baking paper lined freeform cheesecake tin base, and set aside in fridge or freezer while you make the filling. 

Filling Ingredients

• 3 cups raw cashews
• 1 cup coconut yoghurt
• 1 cup coconut cream
• 1/4 cup maple syrup or brown rice syrup (or to taste)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground vanilla bean (or 1 teaspoon vanilla essence)
• 1/3 cup cocoa butter, melted
• 1 tablespoon raw cacao & additional 1 tablespoon maple syrup

Filling Method

• Soak cashews at least 6 hours (or overnight is better) in tepid water.
• Drain & rinse cashews, & place in high speed blender with all other ingredients except cacao butter and cacao. Blend at high speed until smooth - approximately 2 minutes. 
• With motor running, pour melted cacao butter in through top of blender and mix at medium speed until combined. 
• Pour half the mixture into the springform pan, pouring it gently over the biscuit base. Place in freezer to set while you finish the top layer. 
• Add raw cacao & additional maple syrup to blender, and process until smooth. If you want it to look more "chocolately" on this top layer, add more cacao to taste. I was after a very pale pink colour, to compliment the colour of the figs.
• Pour very gently on top of lower layer, and return the whole pan to the freezer to set properly for at least 2 hours. 
• To decorate, melt dark chocolate and spoon into a piping bag. Unmould cake and place on a pedestal cake stand. With one hand twirling the cake stand around, with the other hand pipe melted chocolate onto the edge of the cake. It should dribble down and set immediately as the cake is so cold. Decorate with fresh figs, berries and chunks of chocolate. (We used Panna fig chocolate as it was a match made in heaven!) We also happened to have made some fig truffles earlier, so we used some of them to decorate as well. 
• To serve, remove cake from freezer for about 15 minutes to soften, then cut into serving slices.  

NOTE: if you want a very "white" cheesecake, substitute clear glucose or agave syrup for the maple syrup. It's much sweeter though, so simply adjust to taste. 

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