When my girls were little, one of our favorite summer desserts was a cake that involved angel food cake, strawberries, strawberry jello, and whipping cream. Oh, and lots of sugar. It was light, refreshing, and incredibly tasty. I missed that cake every summer. When I was writing my book, Rawmazing Desserts, I decided to make a raw strawberry cake with strawberry cashew cream. It was a delicious success and captured the best parts of our old favorite with out the processed sugar and dairy.
The cake part of the recipe uses only a few ingredients. Oat flour, almond flour, strawberries, coconut butter and maple syrup. You can easily make your own raw oat flour and your own raw almond flour. With the almonds, to get truly raw almond flour, you need to start with raw almonds. Check the sidebar —> to the right —> for a link.
You will be pleased at how quickly this comes together. And with some pretty healthy ingredients. I always feel the need to remind everyone that you should look at this as a dessert, because it is. And you will want to watch your servings because they are calorie dense. But at least they are nutritional calories!
This recipe for vegan whipped “cream” is crazy. It actually tastes so much like whipped cream you won’t believe it. I put coconut butter in the recipe because it is more of a whole food but if you really want a treat, make this with organic refined coconut oil such as Specturm. It doesn’t have a coconut flavor and it makes a mind-blowing whipped “cream”. We have friends that couldn’t tell the difference.
Just a note. This recipe is made in the dehydrator. I have not tried baking it or making it in the oven. I think if you put the molds in at a very low heat, and watched your time, it could work. But it won’t be raw. Let me know if you try it!
Rawmazing Desserts is currently on sale on Amazon for only 5.95! It is a beautiful book, with almost 200 pages of delicious, raw dessert recipes. There are recipes for cookies, cakes, sweet breads, biscotti, ice cream and newly added frozen desserts along with the basics for ganache, cashew whipped cream and others! You can find it here: Rawmazing Desserts.
Make Ahead Tips
I would highly recommend making the cakes and the strawberry whipped “cream” the day before assembly. The whipped cream needs to set up overnight and then you will mix the strawberries into it just before serving.
The cakes take quite a few hours in the dehydrator. You will need 4, 3 1/2-inch molds for this recipe or you could make it with one 8-inch. Dehydration times will change if you use one larger one. It will take longer.
You can make the cakes a day or two in advance and just keep in the refrigerator until ready to use.
Serves 4 – 8
Strawberry Cake
- 1 1/4 cup almond flour
- 2 cups raw oat flour
- 2 cups strawberries, chopped
- 3/4 cup coconut butter
- 1/2 cup maple syrup (not raw but used in many raw recipes)
- Mix together almond flour and oat flour.
- Puree strawberries in food processor.
- Add coconut butter and maple syrup to strawberries. Pulse until well combined.
- Stir strawberry mixture into almond/oat mixture.
- Place 4, 3 1/2-inch oiled ring molds onto a non-stick dehydrator sheet.
- Distribute batter between molds.
- Dehydrate at 145 for 1 hour*, reduce heat to 115 and dehydrate for 4 more hours.
- Carefully remove rings and dehydrate for another 4-5 hours or until done. You can remove the non-stick sheet at this time, too.
Strawberry Cashew Cream
- 1 cup cashews, soaked until soft and drained.
- 1 cups water
- 1/2 cup coconut butter (or refined coconut oil for no coconut flavor but not raw)
- 1/4 cup maple syrup (not raw but used in many raw recipes)
- 1 vanilla bean
- 2 cups strawberries, copped
- Place the cashews, water, coconut butter and maple syrup in a high-speed blender. Blend until smooth.
- Cut vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape the pulp out. Add the pulp to the blender and blend until well incorporated.
- Place “cream” into a glass container and refrigerate overnight.
- When ready to serve, stir in chopped strawberries.
Assembly
- Cut cakes in half. Place strawberry cashew cream filling between layers and on top. Place in refrigerator until ready to serve.
*Don’t worry, it’s still raw. During the first hour the food is throwing off water and the food temp never gets over 115.
