Coconut Kick

I had been meaning to try out a tofu based cheesecake recipe from How it All Vegan and I was finally motivated to do so when the graham cracker crusts I purchased on deep clearance officially passed their "Best taste by" date. There are a few variations on this cheesecake in the cookbook, with the basic bones staying the same and different ingredients being swapped out to create different flavors. I tweaked it a bit by replacing the half a cup of oil with half a cup of mashed banana, and cutting the sugar in half. I figured banana coconut cheesecake would be just as good. I also added in some more spices, as the only flavoring called for was vanilla extract. It took me a while to come around to tofu, but I still don't like that distinctive tofu-y taste in all its pure taste glory, so the spices were necessary (in my opinion). I got all Martha Stewart with a totally gratuitous sliced banana decoration on top, finished up with some coconut I sprinkled on the last 10 minutes so it could get all toasty.

The verdict, per Bobby, was that it was delicious. I have to say though, that the texture was definitely more custard than cheesecake, and even with the addition of the spices the tofu taste was definitely still lingering in the back ground, kind of photo bombing the flavor profile. It was plenty sweet, so cutting the sugar didn't affect this, I think it's just that when you put an entire block of tofu into a pie, well, there ain't no getting 'round the tofu taste. I would be interested to see what would happen if I cut the tofu in half, but honestly I'm thinking that the best dairy free cheesecakes are probably going to be raw, and made out of nuts. I mean, look at this beautiful thing. Yeah, I know, it's incredible. That's a future experiment, trust me! Check out My New Roots in general. It's a fabulous food blog. Lots of inspiration there, and beautiful pictures to boot.