Hello Friendly Humans! This is so exciting! Welcome to our very first blog post. Mumsie & I are elated to have you with us! Let me introduce myself. 
I am Penelope Chi, the vegan minded, not so vegan Chihuahua, and I am a food blogger…The Blogging Chihuahua… Ms. Next Big Thing! Mumsie is my Mumsie and she is basically just in the background doing all the recipe development, cooking, pots and pan washing, photography and scribbling down of my thoughts. Let’s get this show on the road.
Dessert first? Very naughty. Yeah, we know, but that’s how we roll. Just look at this face…
Naughty for real.
We wanted to make you our very favorite, fancy Holiday dessert, Shwanky Orange Blossom Chi’zcake. You can make your Chi’zcake square, round, triangle, whatever. We made mini round ones and also a big square one, FUN!
So, Mama took this Chi’zcake to her annoying job where she goes and abandons me all the time to massage humans, but what about me? I could use a massage after the panic I feel each and every time I am forsaken and cast aside…Anywho, she takes this vegan Chi’zcake to work and everybody loves it and doesn’t even know that it’s made only from plants. Look how creamy it looks.
Well, it tastes that creamy too! And so fancy with the Neroli Essential Oil added to give it that rare & beautiful orange flower bouquet.
OK, First things first. Since there is no getting around using a packaged vegan cream cheese, use only the best! Don’t even think about using any other brand than Kite Hill! Puh-leez!
We don’t want our chi’zcake to get a bad reputation just because you used a different, nasty brand. (Even my meat eating, cheese munching Grandmumsie couldn’t tell the difference between the Kite Hill brand and the Philly brand. She totally thought it was the Philly stuff, which, by the way, is where we are from, Hoooooo!)
How about a little Aromatherapy now? Awesome! We will be zesting an orange for the crust of the chi’zcake. I thoroughly enjoy when Mum zests oranges. It smells so glorious.
*pic of Penny smelling orange zest
Did you know that all of the essential oils of the orange are in the zest? Also, orange oil is totally safe for cute little chihuahuas like me to sniffffff and can help with the stress and anxiety of our poor, pathetic, neglected lives. Pity Party, yay.
So, we’ll now prepare our 4 mini springform chi’zcake pans. Butter the bottoms and sides of the cute, teeny, tiny pans. Then, on parchment paper, trace out 4 circles with a pencil using the bottoms of your round pans as guides. Cut out the perfect circles and place them inside your buttered pans. Don’t like the taste of pencil? Place the pencil-marked-side down. Brillant. Now butter again on top of the parchment paper.
Divide the yummy, nutty crust mixture into 4 even amounts and press into each of the 4 pans.
Here’s how to prep the baking dish, if that is what you are using. Pretty!
Butter, parchment paper, more butter. Notice all the slices of parchment paper going up the sides of the baking dish too? That’s what’s up!
Press all of the crust mixture into that baking dish!
This crust gets baked the oven for about 10 minutes, taken out and cooled off.
Now we will talk about a water bath. Not for me! I hate baths. So terrifying.
Baths give me WDS (or Wet Doggie Syndrome is the full medical term). The water bath is for the chi’zcake, silly-pants. It prevents it from cracking on top and helps it bake evenly. If you are making the 4 round chi’zcakes, you will need to wrap the pans with tin-foil so the water does not seep through the cracks of the springform and ruin your creations. Then fill a roasting pan fitted with a wire rack with a shallow bit of boiling water. Place this into the oven first, without the chi’zcakes. While that is heating a bit more, fill each mini springform pan with equal amounts of the chi’zcake filling. Then place the filled springform pans onto the wire rack.
If you are baking in a regular baking dish, then the foil is not necessary.
Bake for about 50 minutes (35 minutes for the minis), turning halfway through.
So……
See my Wiggle? This is the kind of wiggle-jiggle you are looking for in the center of your Chi’zcake to test for doneness. You want the middle to be wiggly, not runny or liquidy. (For your information, those are my relaxed MUSCLES wiggling. I’m totally muscular and have a sexy body! Thank you very much.)
Once the chi’zcake is baked to your satisfaction, turn off the oven, open the oven door a crack (Tehe! Mumsie keeps saying crack!) and keep the chi’zcake in the oven. After about an hour, remove the chi’zcake from the oven and let sit on the counter for another hour.
Doing this makes sure that your chi’zcake cools very slowly and does not get “shocked” with the cool air outside of the oven. This way you will have absolutely no cracks (giggle) on the surface of your Work of Art. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 6 hours before serving…to Me.
Are you ready to check out our secret recipe for the most impressive, lovely, vegan chi’zcake? Then here ya go.
Ingredients
For the Crust
- 3/4 cup vegan graham cracker crumbs (about 6 whole cracker sheets, rough ground) or gluten free rolled oats
- 3/4 cup shelled pistachio nuts
- 2 Tablespoons coconut sugar
- 1 Tablespoon orange zest
- 1/4 teaspoon pink Himalayan salt
- 4 Tablespoons melted vegan butter or coconut oil
For the Filling
- 1 cup raw cashews, soaked in boiling water for at least an hour
- 8 ounces vegan cream cheese (Kite Hill brand !!!)
- 1 cup coconut cream (1 & 1/2 cans) *see notes
- 1/2 cup agave nectar, or more if you like it sweeter
- 1 Tablespoon arrowroot
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 Tablespoon melted coconut oil
- 2 teaspoons lemon zest
- 2 Tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 drops Neroli Essential Oil, undiluted
- 1/8 teaspoon pink Himalayan salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Rub 4 mini springform pans or an 8×8 inch baking dish with vegan butter or coconut oil.
- Line the bottoms of the mini round pans with cut out parchment circles or line the 8×8 inch baking dish entirely with parchment paper, up the sides as well, then rub again with butter on top of the parchment. Set aside.
- Into a food processor, add your graham crackers (or oats), pistachio nuts, sugar, orange zest and salt.
- Grind until you have a fine meal (Make sure you have the lid on!).
- Remove the lid and add melted vegan butter.
- Pulse until a dough is formed.
- Transfer the mixture to your prepared baking dish and flatten, spreading evenly onto the bottom and up the sides a bit.
- Bake for about 20 minutes, until the crust looks to be a lovely golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and let cool thoroughly. Reduce oven heat to 325 degrees.
- Drain cashews, discarding the water, and add to a high speed blender together with the Kite Hill vegan cream cheese, coconut cream, agave, arrowroot, vanilla, melted coconut oil, lemon zest and juice, Neroli Essential Oil and salt.
- Blend on high until thoroughly combined, smooth and super, duper creamy. (You will need to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula a few times to achieve this.)
- Taste to see if you like it. Do you want more sugar, salt or another drop of Neroli? It’s up to You 🙂
- Pour the filling over your pre-baked crust, spreading evenly and tap the dish on your counter in order to remove any air bubbles.
- Bake for about 50 minutes to an hour, checking halfway through. You want the middle to wiggle & jiggle (like my buttocks!), not appear runny or liquidy.
- When it is perfectly done, turn off the oven & keep it in there with the door open for about 10 minutes, then remove and let cool completely on your counter top.
- Once cooled Completely!, cover and refrigerate overnight, or at least 6 hours.
- To remove your Chi’zcake from the pan, fill your sink with a shallow bit of very hot or boiling water and let the dish sit in it for about 1 minute. Lift out the side pieces of parchment, then cover the baking dish with a plate and carefully turn upside down. Your Chi’zcake will easily slide out thanks to the parchment paper prep. (Don’t forget to peel off the parchment paper from the bottom of the cake!) Use another pretty plate and cover the bottom of the cake and once more, carefully turn upside down and Vwala!
- Devour within 2 or 3 days please!
Notes:
*Pour out both cans of coconut cream into a mixing bowl so you can pre-mix it with a whisk and measure out your 1 cup for the recipe. The rest can be used for cereal, smoothies or whatever.
This is one of our favorite desserts to make for the Christmas Holidays.
Sexy pic of Chi’zcake…
Sexy pics of Penelope…
Sexyyyyy
Happy Holidays and Peace on Earth, Please!