How to f*** up a simple raw cake?

Easy, just put it in an oven!

Just kidding. I didn’t put a raw cake in the oven! The main reason why I chose to make a raw cake in the first place was to avoid using the oven. This, however, doesn’t mean that I successfully made a cake…

I struggle with cooking, and I’m even worse when it comes to baking. So I decided to make Nadia Lim’s Avocado, Lime and Coconut ‘Cheesecake’. It’s refined sugar free, gluten and dairy free cake, so it can be used for many occasions (now that I’m a food blogger, I need to be able to satisfy many different tastes and needs). It’s bright green so it looks different and should have a wow factor. And it hardly involves the use of the oven. Surely I can make this!

I started like a true pro, full of confidence. I put all the base ingredients in a blender. Well, ALMOST all ingredients. I forgot to buy dates. I stopped for a bit. Thought about it. But decided this shouldn’t be a major problem. The base might not be as sweet, but that’s OK. I guess.

Clearly the first mistake.

I learnt this is kind of a seasonal cake, so it turns out best when the avocados are ripe and full of taste and delicious. I am not sure if avocados are ever in season in north America where I currently am, as the ones I got were hard as.

Mistake #2. But I’ve still got things under control.

The recipe requires one full cup of lime juice. Now, I love lime and its juice, but I also think it’s very sour. So I thought I would alter the recipe and put much less lime in it. The cake turned out a bit less sour, that is true. However, instead of a vivid green cake, I got a rather brownish thingy… Not exactly the wow factor that I was after!

But I learnt from my third mistake and I will never try to make a ‘lime’ cake without sufficient amount of lime again!

Now, despite the above mentioned hiccups I was still on a good track to produce a reasonably good cake. But then I came across a gelatine powder. I tried to buy more gelatine powder as I only had a small bit at home, but I didn’t find it in the supermarket. Instead of trying a different shop, or even at least asking at the store to help me find it, I thought I knew better. I have enough at home! I mean, what does gelatine powder really do? Yeah, glu the cake together. But the amount I put in it’s probably not that important. If I have a bit in it, it will stay together, right? I mean what else?

Big mistake!!

The following day, I enthusiastically opened the fridge. My cake! I was so confident that I even announced the dessert prior to looking into it. I set up a table with dessert plates and forks, and was about to proudly reveal my masterpiece.

I let the first ‘o oh’ sound out straight away after taking the cake out of the fridge. Where is the green colour? Why does this look so brown?? This was followed by an even more worried ‘oh nooooo’ when I opened the cake tin and… let’s just say that the cake was kind of on a very shaky grounds. It didn’t quite fell apart, but it was pretty obvious that it’s not going to stay together for much longer. The full melt down (on my part as well as on the cake’s part) followed when I tried to cut into it. The thing (I can’t even call it a cake as the shape of a cake was just a wishful thinking by this point) just started drifting apart, and soon enough it was all over the bench (and on the floor). I was in tears by now!

Shaun was laughing out loud.

But I recuperated. I put myself back together. Unfortunately I cannot say I managed to do the same for the cake… I scraped the whole thing back into the blender (the base and the top part), mixed it all thoroughly, and served it as… hm, not sure what it was, but I swapped plates and forks for little bowls and spoons. And it tasted surprisingly well!