Vegan Cheesecake Recipe : Mini Mint Chip Cheese Cakes (Gluten Free)
Today I am so happy to bring you a solution to a problem vegans world-wide have faced for years, not being able to eat cheesecake. With a few awesome ingredient swaps, you too can make this sinfully delicious and decadent cheesecake recipe, Vegan-style.
I have been hanging onto this recipe for a few years- three to be exact. I actually totally forgot about it, but found it written out on a crumpled piece of paper, stashed in the very back of a box in storage. This guy has been a work in progress forever, and can easily be swapped to create many other cheesecake flavors. But honestly, who doesn’t LOVE mint chip?! Clearly, this flavor combo it’s a personal favorite of mine.
You can totally make a large cake out of this, but I used a muffin tin, because as much as I would love to eat an entire cake—It’s a bit excessive, and I like to store treats in my freezer for a later date… Smart, I know.
This is made mostly of nuts along with a few dates and some other simply ingredients, you probably already have on hand. Feel free to use the nut of your choice, but personally I LOVE Pecans. Put your nuts into your food processor along with some coconut flakes, some cocoa powder for chocolate flavor, and just a pinch of salt. Pulse this a few times. Once you have a nice crumbled consistency add as many dates as you need in order to get sweetness you crave.
The next step in the creation of this delicious cheesecake is to create the filling. To get that creamy consistency, I used cashews (every vegans favourite nut) along with almond milk; this will become our cream cheese substitute. For colour, I used some mint flavoured liquid chlorophyll. The idea behind the chlorophyll is to give your cake a nice light green hue, much the same that mint chocolate chip ice cream would have. If you’re not a fan of green cake than by all means simply just leave out the chlorophyll. But I think it looks really pretty to swirl it with chocolate.
The key to “the swirl” is to save 1/3 of your mixture, add cocoa powder and more rich chocolate flavor, and pour it into the green mint base with conviction–Pour it like you mean it, we need this to penetrate the mixture below it. To create a pretty chocolate and mint swirl– take a chopstick and use it to swirl each colour together just a bit. You want to be able to see a little of the chocolate and a little bit of the green.
You can also swirl other flavours, like PB & J, strawberry and lemon, or blueberry! This recipe is a bit time consuming, but once you’ve done it once it’s super simple to do over and over again. Enjoy!
- Chocolate Crust
- 1 cup raw pecans
- ¼ cup unsweetened coconut flakes
- 6-8 medjool dates, pitted
- ½ Tbsp cacao powder
- ½ tsp vanilla
- ⅛ tsp Himalayan pink salt
- Mint Chocolate Cake Filling:
- 1 ½ cups cashews (soaked overnight)
- 1 cup almond milk
- ½ cup agave or maple syrup
- 2 Tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp mint extract
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp liquid chlorophyll
- ⅛ tsp Himalayan pink salt
- 3 Tbsp Cacao butter (melted)
- ½ cup coconut oil(melted)
- Reserve ⅓ of the cake filling at add:
- 1 tbsp cacao powder
- ½ Tbsp vanilla extract
- Place all ingredients, except the dates in a food processor and pulse about 6 times to get crumbles.
- Add the dates and process until the mixture is sticking together on it's own. Add more dates as necessary to create a nice sticky crust. The mixture should stick together easily when pressed between your fingers.
- Line each muffin tin with a 3-4 inch strip of parchment paper.
- Press about 1- 1½ Tbsp of the pecan mixture onto the bottom of each muffin tin-on top of the paper strip- to form a nice crust.
- Once you have filled each tin with crust- place in the fridge or freezer to harden while you work on your cake filling.
- Drain cashews from the soaking water and rinse well.
- Add them, along with all the remaining ingredients except the coconut oil and cocoa butter, to a high speed blender and blend until smooth.
- While the blender is running, add the melted cacao butter and coconut oil and blend until well incorporated.
- Pour the filling into muffin tins on top of the prepared crusts, leaving some space at the top, reserving ⅓ of the filling.
- Blend the reserved filling with cacao powder and vanilla until smooth.
- Pour the reserved chocolate filling into each cup with the mint filling you just added. Pour with conviction.
- Using a chopstick swirl the chocolate filling with the mint to get a marbled effect.
- Freeze the cheesecakes for 1-2 hours until solid.
- Remove the cheese cakes from the muffin trays.
- Allow them to thaw for 15 minutes before serving, or serve them cold as a nice cool ice cream treat!
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