Pascha is a traditional Easter dish made from curd cheese & nuts and dried fruits. It tastes very similar to a cheese cake, but it is made without a crust and the texture is a little firmer. This year I veganized the recipe and made this delicious dessert/cake without butter, cream and cheese. The cake consists of blended cashews and millet and is flavored with orange juice and vanilla. Since I´m a total sucker for nuts, I really liked the taste – it tasted like a heavenly creamy cashew cheesecake with huge amounts of other crunchy nuts and chewy cranberries and raisins. The only thing I wasn´t so happy about was the texture – I don´t have a high speed blender, so I had to add more liquids in order to blend the nuts properly until smooth and creamy. The cake wasn´t firm enough to hold its shape, so I had to freeze it for few hours to make sure it firms up properly. So I guess this ended up being more a semifreddo than a pascha, but the taste definitely compensated the lack of texture. It disappeared dangerously fast, so I assume that everybody was pretty happy about having pascha in form of an ice cream. In the recipe below, I reduced the amount of liquids, so you should end up having a nice and firm pascha, when you decide to give it a try. Just make sure you use a good blender, which can handle blending nuts without adding to much liquids to the mixture.
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Enjoy!
- ½ cup (uncooked) millet
- 3 cups (soaked) cashews
- 150ml. rice cream (or coconut cream)
- juice of 1 lime
- juice of half an orange
- ½ cup agave syrup (or any sweetener of your choice)
- 1 Tbsp. coconut oil
- 1 tsp. orange zest
- pinch of vanilla extract
- ½ cup soaked raisins
- 1/3 cup soaked cranberries
- 1/3 cup chopped almonds
- 1/3 cup chopped walnuts
- 1/3 cup chopped macadamias
Instructions:
- Cook your millet following the instructions on the package. It should be slightly overcooked. Drain and set aside.
- Put the soaked cashews, cooked millet, rice cream, juice of lime & orange, coconut oil and the agave syrup into a blender and blend on high speed until smooth and creamy.
- Add the orange zest, vanilla, soaked and drained cranberries & raisins and all the chopped nuts (you can add any chopped nuts you like) to the mixture and stir well until combined.
- Line a sieve with a clean cheesecloth. Put the sieve with the cheesecloth over a large bowl and pour your pascha mixture into the sieve. Let it sit overnight in a refrigerator.
- When your pascha still isn´t firm the next morning, try to freeze it for few hours. Take out of the freezer 30min. before serving or microwave for 30sec.
Enjoy!