Vegan Baked Vanilla Cheesecake. No coconut

I’m sure it’s obvious through the recipes on my blog that I love raw desserts! Not only are they nutritious, perfect for balancing hormones and delicious they are also so much easier to make than anything that requires baking. But I’ve wanted to try a baked vegan cheesecake for the longest time and so I finally got the courage to throw some ingredients together and come up with a recipe. Besides the fact that the filling separated a tiny bit from the sides of the base (I didn’t mind) much to my surprise it turned out really well!

I was actually quite surprised at how different a baked vegan vanilla cheesecake tasted to a traditional raw vegan cheesecake. Although the recipe was a little lower in fat than my raw Cheesecakes, I found that the baked version tastes a bit fattier? The only thing I can put that down to is that the baking helped the nuts release more of their oils. The other thing I think made this baked cheesecake taste different is that I didn’t have to rely on coconut cream or oil in the recipe. Since I use coconut mostly to help my raw Cheesecakes set, I figured a baked cheesecake didn’t need it as it didn’t need to sit in the freezer for hours! I do love coconut! It’s an amazing healthy fat and an important plant-based fat for hormone synthesis but sometimes I just don’t want a coconut taste in every single dessert I make! As I’ve mentioned before I was also a little put off by coconut when I was pregnant and it actually took me a long time to get over it even after the baby was born. I’m well and truly over it now and am loving coconut again but just thought I would mention it because coconut is a common food aversion for pregnant ladies, especially plant-based pregnant ladies and I genuinely wish I had this cake when I was pregnant because I think I would have loved it! I also know so many friends that want to eat healthy desserts but don’t love raw desserts due to the coconut taste.

I genuinely do not know if this baked vegan cheesecake tastes similar to a traditional non-vegan dairy-based cheese one because believe it or not I’ve never liked the real deal so I’ve only had a couple of tastes here and there. I asked my husband who is more of a cheesecake lover than me and he said it wasn’t quite like the real thing. (Apparently, it was better) Personally, I think the texture of the filling is very similar to the dairy-based Cheesecakes but it does lack that cheesy tang and is probably also a lot less sweet.

Even though this vegan cheesecake is baked it’s still dairy, gluten and refined sugar-free like all of my raw desserts! It’s also just as good for hormone health as it also has the added benefit of good quality tofu which can be especially beneficial for women struggling with low estrogen, menopausal symptoms, and women who have lost their periods.

I hope you love this recipe as much as we did!