Monday 10 August 2015

Dairy-free Chocolate Cheesecake

I know, that sounds terrible, right? It's actually amazing. And all I needed to make it was a small aubergine... (well in my case, a large aubergine, because my cake pans were a different size to what they suggested!) I don't know how many people this serves, but it's so rich that we were eating it for lunch-dessert and real-dessert for about a week!

Ingredients

  • 3 small or 1 large whole aubergines (weighing roughly 600g)
  • 450g best dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids), broken into squares
  • 75g good quality cocoa powder
  • 100g ground almonds
  • 4 large or extra-large eggs (could substitute tofu to make this vegan)
  • 300g clear honey (could substitute sugar or agave syrup to make this vegan)
  • 3 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp brandy
Line two 8″/20cm springform tins with baking parchment and lightly brush the base and sides with a little oil. Preheat the oven to 180 C.

Peel the aubergine(s) using a vegetable peeler and place in a large microwaveable bowl, then microwave on high for 8-10 minutes until soft and collapsed. Roughly dice and pour away any thin watery fluid. Blend/puree using an electric blender. Again in a microwaveable bowl, melt the dark chocolate in the microwave, this time on a medium setting, for 5 minutes, stirring several times. As soon as the chocolate and aubergine are less than 50C, combine with the pureed aubergine, then add all of the other ingredients and mix well (no need to worry about overbeating as this recipe has no flour!)

Divide the mixture equally between the two tins and bake for 30 minutes. A skewer probably won't come out clean, as the final texture is more like a cheesecake or mudcake than a spongecake.

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