Of Cheesecakes and Morals

Last night I went to a holiday party and brought a vegan eggnog cheesecake with a graham cracker crust and maple-ish frosting and may I say it was spectacular!

First, the all-purpose crust, with which I’ve made a handful of pies with recently:

Nabisco Original Graham Crackers (no honey) or Health Valley’s Amaranth Graham Crackers (use 10 crackers if the former, 35 if the latter, but who’s counting)
1/3 cup Earth Balance
1/4 cup date sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon (optional)

Preheat oven to 350, put crackers in a sandwich bag with melted Earth Balance (microwave for 15 seconds), sugar and cinnamon, and crush. I don’t use a blender because I like big chunks of cracker. Nabisco can easily be crushed by hand, but for Health Valley I wrap in a towel and whack it with a hammer a bunch of times.

Press crust onto pan and up sides, if possible. (I used a cake pan, as the only pie ones I had were the flimsy aluminum ones, and this cake is too deep and has frosting and it would overflow. Going up the sides was a bit tough.) Bake for 8-10 minutes.

Here’s the filling recipe, which I modified from the FatFree Vegan Kitchen. Please note that it isn’t even CLOSE to fat free (and it’s not meant to be). I modified because I realized I had only the cubed tofu, which when drained is 8 oz. (and note that the original recipe calls for light tofu), and I was too lazy to go up the block to the supermarket (Publix, which by the way rocks and has lots of tasty vegan and organic morsels). I also stay away from regular sugar and use arrowroot rather than cornstarch.

8 ounces of extra firm silken tofu
12 ounces of Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese
3/4 cup date sugar
1/2 cup vegan eggnog (I used Silk’s)
2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice
2 1/2 tablespoons dark rum
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg, packed
3 tablespoons arrowroot

Blend cream cheese, eggnog an tofu until smooth, then all the rest of the ingredients and blend until re-smooth. Pour into crust and bake for 55 minutes-1 hour. Remove, cool, then chill in refrigerator. As with other vegan pies, this one probably should be baked the day before you need it. I needed it 6 hours later and it was fine, but could have been better set.

I made frosting because I put a knife into the center of the cake and it left a gash and I had to mask it. I made a cream cheese frosting for some of the pumpkin pies I baked around Thanksgiving, but I wanted something a bit lighter.  I improvised with what I had in the kitchen, as I was dedicated to not having to shower and leave the house until I absolutely had to. Here’s what I came up with, and it was delicious:

The remaining 4 ounces from the second package of Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 Tbsp. Earth Balance
1 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbsp. arrowroot

Blend, then chill a wee bit, then pour onto cake and jiggle pan around to fully cover the top with a smooth, even glaze. If you chill the frosting until it sets completely, it’s thicker and needs to be spread.

As soon as my battery is charged for my camera, I’ll post a photo if there’s a good one among my many attempts.

As for morals, I noticed something yesterday regarding welfare and rights, and the details are unimportant but the gist is that welfarists are enraged by the way we treat animals, and those of us who don’t think using animals is right are just as enraged. I often feel like welfarists believe our argument is some kind of intellectual, philosophical one and isn’t at all visceral and has no sense of urgency. But I am nauseated when I see a horse pulling a carriage. Not because that horse is being mistreated, but because that horse is there, being forced to do that work. It sickens me to see people prancing around wearing the skin, hair and fur of sentient beings. Not because of how the animals were treated or how their parts were "harvested," but because we breed them to harvest them. And I even provide my Greyhounds with plenty of opportunities to be off leash because whenever I put their collars on (they don’t wear them as a rule), I imagine what it’s like to have a collar put on me and to be at the mercy of a person at the other end of a leash. I find it bizarre that most human beings think nothing of using animals to fill their wants and needs. And I feel so strongly about not using animals that I cannot possibly campaign to merely change the way they’re being used. This isn’t a mere difference in strategy, this is a completely different principle, and no less urgent.

PS-I forgot the most important detail! The chef at last night’s party loved my cake and asked for the recipe. He has been dipping his little toe into the dairy-free world and hasn’t liked most of what he’s tried his hand at. This particular cake is something he needs this time of year, and he’s adding it to his menu! Frosting included!