Dessert

Maybe five or six (or seven) years ago my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, and I learned about the raw food diet. I was willing to try it out, and did so for approximately five days, if I remember correctly. A few years later, which was really only about three years ago, we were reminded of the raw food lifestyle by way of an article on CNN.com. After some back and forth, we decided that we'd try raw for a month. After our wedding. After our honeymoon, which was nine day cruise to the Caribbean. As you may be aware, cruises typically add on at least 25 or 30 pounds just because of the huge variety of food (I exaggerate - a bit), so of course, we couldn't start to be healthy just yet.

So anyway, we got married, went on our honeymoon, then came back and started the "30-day challenge". We kept an online food diary, mainly shared with family. I had evangelized the raw food diet to my mother when she was in town for our wedding, and she was dead set against even trying it. Then she secretly tried it as we were trying it.

Lest you think that I have been unusually obsessed with making vegan cheesecake lately, let me reassure you. I have and I haven't. :)

First off, my husband made that vegan chocolate cheesecake and I am the one who made the raspberry sauce. Secondly, I did make the vegan peanut butter chocolate cheesecake but it was for my husband's birthday. Finally, I take no blame for making these cute little creamy pops.

I had been seeing banners for The Daring Bakers on other cooking blogs for a while, and finally decided to investigate further. I hadn't realized it, but being a member of The Daring Bakers means you have to participate in monthly baking challenges. I'm always up for a challenge, so I decided to join.

So there you go. The Daring Bakers are at fault for making me make cheesecake again. I'm not upset about it at all though.

When I was growing up it was tradition that my mom would always make me some variation of strawberry shortcake for my birthday. I am not entirely sure why. Maybe it was because of my love of the Strawberry Shortcake. Or maybe it was because strawberries were showing up on grocery store shelves in April. No matter the reason, I loved it. The cake. The strawberries. The whipped cream. Mmmmm...

A few days ago when my...ahem...30th birthday was approaching (ahem!) I decided to honor tradition by making vegan strawberry shortcake for myself and my husband.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) season is soon upon us again, and we cannot wait. We've been members of a local CSA for several years now, and finally this year we decided to just purchase the fruit share. Twice. We love fruit - that fruit from Hepworth Farms - so much that we decided to get twice as much.

In the meantime we rely on our local Greenmarket in Union Square. We bought so many apples a few weeks ago that we're overloaded. We do love apple crisp, though, and we've had it a couple of times already.

One year ago we embarked on the vegan cheesecake quest. It was my husband's birthday and I made him a cheesecake from Fatfree Vegan Kitchen. We didn't love that first cheesecake, but the texture was there, as well as the creaminess. It seemed that we had a mission. My husband had that gleam in his eyes that he sometimes gets when he sees a worthy challenge set before him. This year it's a different gleam, because now peanut butter has entered the picture and we've both realized that the possible flavors are endless.

Tomorrow is my husband's birthday, and of course you know that we must have cheesecake. Again. That said, he jumped the gun and decided to make cheesecake a couple of weeks ago (this post is slightly late).

This time, for round two, he decided to layer it. Chocolate on the bottom and plain on top. I decided it would be even prettier with some raspberry sauce.

Last weekend I purchased a few apples from the farmers market in Union Square, and had a couple of large ones left this weekend. Usually when I have a bunch of apples on hand I'll make apple crisp, but I wanted to do something different. Considering I only had two apples, I couldn't make a full apple pie, so I decided to try making single-serving pies. I had no idea if it would turn out okay, but hooray - they're great!

When my husband and I were vegetarians his favorite dessert was cheesecake. I actually did not like it that much, so when we became vegan it was no big loss to me. Several months ago, however, it was his birthday and I thought I'd try to make a vegan version. I am a big one for following recipes pretty closely, so in the end we did not like it that much, but it set my husband on a crusade to perfect the recipe. We have since discovered, through the trial and error of multiple cheesecakes, that it is best made with chocolate. Chocolate does solve a lot of things in my mind, and it has surpassed the task with this recipe, which my husband made.