I don’t do normal particularly well – especially when it comes to recipes. I always have to go slightly left of centre, or right, whatever, but rarely straight down the middle. I make pies with beetroot or purple carrots, I make ice cream with avocados, I make sandwiches with fruit.

So when we chose ‘Nuts’ as the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop theme for July my mind started ticking away. Baklava did occur to me, as it had for our ‘Layers‘ theme in March, but the same thing that put me off of it then – namely the enormous amount of honey that gets poured over the top – put me off this month as well.

I love a good Orange & Almond cake, but that’s been done round these parts, and ever since I made the Vegan Chai Buttercream with hazelnuts I had been wanting to try my hand at a version of cashew cream. This amazing [if I do say so myself] ‘cheesecake’ was the result.

An expected touch of caramel from using dates instead of sugar to sweeten the cake. A crunchy crumbly crust with quinoa flour and cocoa powder. Coconut oil to hold it all together and a smidgen of chocolate to top it off. Not a hint of tofu in sight and as an added bonus I discovered a great blog while researching recipes – yum!

For the recipe: Vanilla and Chocolate Cashew Cheesecake

Source: 84thand3rd.com

We made vegan cream cheese and now we're going to do something awesome with it. Are you ready? It's one of my favorite dairy-free recipes to date! You're going to start by making a walnut-based crust. It's just four ingredients, none of which are dried fruit. As much as I love the no bake crusts that use dried fruit and nuts, I wanted to do something different with this and ended up finding walnut flour in the process! Then, you're going to make cranberry sauce. A bit of orange zest here, some boiling there, it's a cinch. Lastly, you're going to mix your awesome, homemade, vegan cream cheese with some vanilla, coconut nectar, and BAM. Layer it all up, stick it in the fridge and you're good to go. The most painful part of the whole process is limiting yourself to one two squares per day. Hey, it's Christmas, we could all do with learning to embrace our indulgences.

For the recipe: No Bake Vegan Cranberry Cheesecake Squares

Source: healthfulpursuit.com