Adventures in Raw ‘Cooking’ – Luscious Lemon Cookies

Lately I have been really getting into raw eating, raw recipes and living a more… raw/vegan life in general. I have no moral objections to eating meat, so I still do on occasion, but I prefer not to. I feel ‘lighter’ when I stick to most fruit and vege with some seafood.

Anywho, I downloaded the raw cookbook from Raw Pleasure so I could give a go at making some real raw recipes. Anyone can make a smoothie, but how do you make a meal or dessert with no flour, sugar, artificial sweeteners, etc?

When I saw a recipe for ‘Luscious Lemon Cookies’ I knew I had to try it because The Bloke loves lemon. (Poor guy will probably never get a lemon meringue pie now that I’ve taken a turn for raw…) I finally managed to get all the ingredients yesterday…

…I mainly needed cashews and a couple extra lemons. (Yeah, I have a very small countertop.)

I learned a few things about my various cooking tools…

When you’re grinding two cups of cashews, you will find out all the ways your nut grinder sucks. Ack. I got what I paid for (the cheapie) and it works, but when the top is constantly trying to twist off the bottom while you’re grinding?

Well, that was just the beginning.

Something to add to my Christmas list? A proper lemon zesting thingy. I gave up with my traditional grater after only getting this much. Bad chef! Bad chef!

I piled all the ingredients in the blender…

…and got reminded of how much my blender sucks.

I do love my blender, but it doesn’t always cooperate. It blended the cashes up pretty well (the bottom layer) and then decided to give me the finger. I decided the ingredient just must be too dry, so I added some orange juice.

That didn’t help.

I couldn’t add a heap of orange juice because they needed to be cookies, not a bowl of porridge. Not to mention they are meant to be lemon cookies, not orange ones. (Though that’s a thought…) I tried mixing things around, poking it with a chopstick, doing whatever I could, and it simply wouldn’t work.

My breaking point came when…

…*sniff* My spatula broke. Another cheapie, but I loved it.

After that, I said ‘screw this’ and unloaded everything into a mixing bowl. I decided on more agave nectar anyway, so it worked out. Plus, I almost always prefer mixing things by hand. This felt a little funky, but it was fun.

The next part of the recipe was to put the mix into cookie shapes and then dehydrate.

I don’t have a dehydrator.

I could have figured out how to use my oven as such, but it’s been too hot to do those sorts of things, so I had another ‘screw this’ moment and chucked the whole thing into a cakepan. My favvie cakepan because you can ‘unlock’ the ring and leave only the bottom.

Ta da! Luscious lemon pie crust. I put it in the freezer for about… four or five hours. During that time, I figured out what to do with it.

After dinner, I took it out of the freezer and found that it was firm but still pliable. I cut out a piece of pie shaped chunk, put it on a plate and topped it with raw fruit.

Delicious cool fruity treat for a warm night.

Of course, it was less than 100% raw when I topped it with a bit of cream for The Bloke, but it’s still the healthiest dessert we have had… ever.

Looking back…

Thinking back on it, I would have changed a few things:

1. Lime juice instead of orange juice. (I love lemon n’ lime.)
2. Mix it all by hand.
3. Top with more mild fruit like strawberries, bananas, kiwi… It was good, but the citrus of the ‘crust’ needed to be balanced more than it was. (I used mixed fruit that included raspberries and cherries.)

All in all, I think it’s a success.

Next up? Raw chocolate. I’ve already made a couple batches, but I keep forgetting to take pictures. Ack!

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This post is in memory of my spatula. It served me well.