Last autumn my days were all about cakes, pies, cookies, donuts, snack bars, recipe designing, recipe testing, recipe writing, food styling and food photography. I was making my baking book, and it was published just a few days ago! Making a book is not an easy task, especially when you’re doing it all on your own. But it was all worth it, because baking is my passion and now I can share my family’s most loved recipes with you! The book is only available in Finnish at the moment, but hopefully some day in other languages, too. A few recipes didn’t make it to the book, because deadlines were coming up and the recipes weren’t quite ready. But now they are, and I’m sharing the first one with you: Vegan piña colada cake – a lush creamy cake with a tropical feel.
Reasons to love raw & no bake cakes
- One of the main reasons (quite obviously) is flavor and texture – a very creamy kind of cheesecakey flavor with a caramelly crust made from a mix of nuts/seeds, sweetener, oil/nut butter and a pinch of salt to tie the flavors together.
- Another reason is that raw & no bake cakes are very simple to make and it’s (almost) impossible to go wrong! If you just keep tasting the cake (crust and filling) while you make it, you can also keep adding ingredients until you’re satisfied with the texture and flavor.
- The third reason is that although they are heavy (all the nuts, seeds, oil), the ingredients are usually very clean and wholesome.
- And finally: the flavor combos are endless! I prefer both fruity and dark chocolatey cakes, and also very sweet caramel ones. You can make your cake into a one-layer cake, or have several layers to make the flavors even more interesting.
I usually make my raw & no bake cakes with a cashew-coconut filling, because these two ingredients work so well in raw treats. If you’re not a fan of cashew or coconut, no worries! In raw cakes these ingredients are used more for their amazing creamy texture than flavor. By adding other ingredients such as chocolate and fruits, you can disguise both the nutty and coconutty flavors. But of course you can also let these flavors shine, like I’ve done here with my Piña colada cake. It’s a cake with coconut and pineapple in just the right amounts to let both of them be the stars of the show.
Although this cake didn’t make it to the book, I do have three other no-bake cake recipes there: 1. A beautiful Chocolate mousse tart for breakfast 2. Salted caramel-popcorn cake when really big sweet cravings hit and 3.Blueberry-tahini cake when you’re looking for something a bit more spicy and fancy. If these and 67 other yummy recipes sound tempting, you might want to learn some Finnish and order my book 😉
Sending you sweet tropical vibes with my Piña colada cake recipe!
♥ Tiina
Read post in Finnish.
- Crust
- 2 dl gluten-free rolled oats
- 1 dl toasted coconut flakes (I use Urtekram)
- 3 tbsp maple syrup
- 3 tbsp almond butter
- two pinches of salt (or about ⅛ tsp)
- Filling
- White layer:
- 2,5 dl unsalted cashews
- 2,5 dl frozen pineapple cubes
- 1 dl coconut cream
- 3 tbsp coconut butter (I use Foodin)
- 1 tbsp maple syrup
- Yellow layer:
- 1,5 tbsp lemon juice
- 1,5 tbsp maple syrup
- ½ tsp turmeric powder
- pinch of ground black pepper
- Cake toppings: berries and coconut yogurt or cream or other decorations of choice. I used cloudberries, raspberries and piped coconut yogurt + coconut cream sweetened with a drop of maple syrup
- Soak cashews in a bowl filled with water for at least 30 minutes. If you're in a hurry you can also soak them in boiling water for about 5-10 minutes.
- For the crust: Blend all ingredients to get a thick batter. Taste and add nut butter and/or maple syrup if needed.
- Press the batter into a springform cake pan lined with parchment paper. I used two small springform cake pans with a diameter of 11 cm but you can use one bigger one too.
- Drain and rinse soaked cashews and blend all the white layer ingredients into a smooth cream.
- Pour about half of the creamy white layer on top of the crust.
- Add the yellow layer ingredients to the other half still in the blender and blend until smooth.
- Pour the yellow layer on top of the white layer.
- Freeze cakes/cake for at least 2-4 hours or until solid and easy to cut into pieces. Pictured in these photos are two mini cakes on top of eachother.
- Decorate with berries and coconut cream/coconut yogurt or toppings of choice.
- Enjoy these tropical vibes!
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