Vegan Pumpkin Cheesecake Recipe
Baked Vegan Pumpkin Cheesecake (Rainbow Nourishments) uses ready-made ginger cookies (Mr Organic and Rhythm 108 are both free from palm oil) for the crust, and tops with a caramel pecan glaze.
This is a baked vegan cheesecake that is really easy to make, using warm spices and vegan cream cheese.
If you can’t find canned pumpkin puree (and don’t want to make from scratch) you can use cooked sweet potato (also make ‘pumpkin pie spice’ by blending sweet spices (cinnamon, ginger etc).
Although an American dessert, everyone loves cheesecake. And a big slice of this makes a fantastic dessert, to finish off your plant-based meal!
Keep nutmeg spice away from pets. Read more on food safety for people and pets.
For tinned ingredients, pop lids back inside the tin (or pop ring pulls over the holes) before recycling, to avoid wildlife getting trapped.
Choose Small Pumpkins for Best Flavour
Pumpkins are a winter squash and are very tasty, if you buy the small ones. You can also roast and eat the seeds, which are high in zinc.
More popular in the USA and Canada (where pumpkin pie is the official Thanksgiving dessert), they are also delicious in soup and quick breads.
The word comes from the German for ‘pepon’ which means ‘large melon’. They are quite bland and taste a bit like sweet potato, it’s mainly the other ingredients like spices that bring out their flavour.
Pumpkins are a huge food waste issue, due to Halloween. These large (edible though tasteless) pumpkins are bred, leaving around 22 million to rot on landfills each year. Generating methane gas, instead of feeding hungry people.
How to Prepare a Fresh Pumpkin
Although canned pumpkin puree is good for desserts and baking, it’s best to use fresh pumpkin for savoury dishes. It’s pretty easy to prepare, as long as you have a good serrated knife to slice the pumpkin. Chop flesh into wedges, toss in oil and spices, and bake in the oven for around 30 to 40 minutes.
Scoop out the (rinsed) seeds, boil in salted water for 10 minutes, then roast with oil and spices in the oven for 10 minutes.
Some recipes online for pumpkin use Specoloos biscuits, but they are made with palm oil. You can make your own speculoos cookies with brown sugar, spices, sea salt and vegan butter (Flora has no palm oil).
