Chaya Ryvka: Welcome to everydaydish.tv. This is Chaya Ryvka and I will be showing you how to make a really a delicious raw Chocolate-Pecan Crust today. This crust can be used for a cheesecake. It could be used for a pie; you can take it and turn it into delicious cookies, deep dark chocolate cookies. You can row them into balls and eat them like little fudge balls anything you do with it, its going to be amazing as long as you like pecans and a chocolate which most of us love, so we are starting with our pecans in our food processor and I do want to mention that I get my most of my nuts from livingtreecommunity.com. They carry amazing, beautiful, Raw, fresh, Organic, Nuts, seeds, oil, dates, dried fruits and foods in general so just still let you know these pecans come from the livingtreecommunity.com they are amazing and unless my food processor.
I also have here, some raw coconuts and you want to make sure there raw everything about chocolate is different once its been cooked and raw chocolate is not only the highest source of antioxidants known thus for nature but it is very high in minerals in general and all of that changes once its been cooked. Some of its most excellent property is turn into more dangerous chemicals after it has been cooked, so we’re also using raw cocoa powder.
And lastly we are going to add some fresh Organic Medjool dates are soft, they are sweet, they are beautiful Medjool dates and we just can add those rights into our food processor kind of dispersing them around. And then also going to add just a cup pinches of salt. Anytime you are making food in general the salt will open up your taste but so that the flavors can really come to life in your mouth. And especially in sweets, people might think sweet and salt that sounds wired but then you add pinch of salt to this sweet food it brings everything to life in your mouth and it just incredible in flavor. If ever I tell people of ever you taste your food and it’s not popping and coming to life in your mouth and that’s probably that is just need another little pinch of salt. Salt is the use for sweet and it’s use them chocolate especially, so if it doesn’t quick will taste quite right just add a little pinch of salt. If you want the recipe for this go to everydaydish.tv to find the recipe and you find that there is also liquid vanilla in our crust but we want to save that till the end. I am not going to add any of the liquid vanilla and the recipe for the liquid vanilla is also on everydaydish.tv.
But we want to save that because if you add it right away everything would bind together and I want my pecans to breakdown so it has a nice, fine smooth texture in my mouth. There is going to be a crunch to this because I added coconuts but in general a pie crust or cheesecake crust is nice, smooth texture in your mouth, so I am trying to maintain that texture with our nut crust and the way I’m going to do that today is by holding off on that vanilla, so you will notice also I become very good friends with my food processor, I bring it close to my body to start and once I turn it on and not the type to stop at all the time and uses spatula or wipe everything down you can use that method if you method if you don’t feel comfortable being gentle but strong with your food processor but for today I’m going to show you how highlight to use my food processor
So first of all I’m going to turn the food processor on. And you will notice all the nuts just starting to move around and everything is going to start to get processed and at some point is going to become a darker color, the pecans were going to start to let their moisture in there fat out and things will start to hold together little bit more at that point, I want just rocking. Gently rocking my food processor to keep that mixture moving so lets get that started.
Okay, another thing I would like mention when you are making this pecan crust or any crust depending on the nut that you are using it will release more or less moisture and fat, so when you are using pecans they are very fatty nut along with macadamia nuts long as there are fatty nuts well get easily get turn into butter. Once its turn into a butter in your food processor its not really possible to do a crust with you can do many other things you can make milks with there, you can turn it into caramel, you can turn it into other types of food but as far as our crust we want to make sure its not getting too broken down at first so you just going to keep that going and once you see its start creating as small strip on the bottom, you see a small strip on the bottom onwards all starting to collect. You probably want to stopped that point get a spatula and just get down their into the corner to move that mixture away from the edge so that it does start to attract the rest of the nut mixture to an butter up and can close to it.
Once you done that, you just can close your food processor up again and keep it going, what we want is a consistency that we can hold in hand firmly and it will hold together. Its not quite there yet, so you keep it going for just another couple moments. Okay so once I notice that mixture is starting to hold together on its own its pretty obvious that everything is pretty well broken down, I can going there and feel it with my hand.
And this point I still having added the liquid vanilla, so I want to make sure its not quite ready and its almost ready but at this point just a make sure that its almost that I’m squeezed together, it is holding together pretty firmly. I can break the part with a clean break its not following apart of my hands but at the same time I can crumbled it up and it will fall the part and if I intend that to happen, so at this point it feels like a good time to add a liquid vanilla and you will notice that once I add this vanilla in there it will really start to hold everything, pull everything together and that’s precisely why we don’t use in the beginning and its all a great tool for when you working with the dried nut, if your nut is not holding together on one hand you could use dates to pull that crust together and hold and at the same time you might not want a sweet crust. I prefer my crust not to be too sweet because this that filling in my pie, that filling in cheese cake is going to be the sweet part so if I add that vanilla is also going to help those nuts to come together buying so that I can form a nice solid crust, so we just going to keep that going.
Okay, you could see pretty quickly, how the once I put that vanilla in there, the entire crust moisture end up a bit more and its holding together beautifully I can squeezed with the gentle squeeze, it holds together I can break it a part, clean break its not following apart my fingers but I can still crumbled it up a bit. When you are making your crust for a raw pie, raw dessert, and part of the importance when you’re making it as thinking about serving, serving raw cakes and raw pies is a little bit different then when you are serving cooked pies or cooked cheesecakes because in a cooked pier cheesecakes that crust cooks up pulls together and will easily lift right out of the pan we’re not cooking this pie, the crust is going to hard and hold together.
Well hold together through out pressure but can also easily stick right into the fry pan, so we want to make sure on hand is not too sticky, its also not to dry of its too dry it will fall the part so that’s also not the ideal that we are looking for in our cheesecake or pie. But at this point it feels perfect the last thing I want to do is gave the taste that’s always have the fun of making food is taste in your food and also just making sure it has that perfect flavor that we are looking for I’m going to get the quick taste. Better than ever, that’s absolutely fabulous if you want exactly the flavor and were looking for, I would know that probably that extra little pinch of salt that would bring all the flavors together and really make, make it come to live.
So now at this point I am going to pull out, I’m going to using this mixture for a cheesecake paste today so I have my springform pan here and in a normal baking scenario we would be using this springform pan with the bottom will facing up and but for raw foods we don’t want that bottom lip up if would have that up then it would be very difficult to get in there and serve that cheesecake, so for our raw food purpose is were actually going to flip that over and use that in opposite directions so that bottom lip as you can see is going to be facing down. So we just take that set it up right in our springform pan and lock it into place.
So I have my springform pan ready to go and I’m just going to a little bit of extra virgin coconut oil this is just for the purpose of greasing my pan I want to make sure that I have the easiest time in serving this pie, because we are putting so much work into making it beautiful lets keep it that way even after we serve it so what I’m doing it just greasing the very bottom of the pan and also the sides on the very bottom just so that the crust will release really easily when I’m ready to open up my springform pan.
Once that’s all greased together you will just take your mixture in one hand, I like to hold the blade down with my finger in the bottom of the pan and I’ll take in the bottom of the food processor and I’ll take the pan bring the two together and just release the blade, once that’s done I can gently I can carefully remove that S blade from my food processor and scrape any extra of the crust mixture that might be stuck in the bottom of the food processor body, release that into my pan .Now at this point you just want to feel with your hands and your crust mixture of there any lumpy parts and break those up so that you have fine and consistent texture in your mixture and then with the flat palm you are going to move that mixture all along the bottom of your cheesecake pan.
You can feel with the center of your palm if there is more in the middle of your pan and then also going around that edge on the outside to make sure that its all in an in even line around the edge of the outside of my pan. I like all of my cheesecakes to look consistent, to taste consistent and so I’ll just take a little extra time to make sure that everything is evenly spread. Now once that’s done its already just to be gently but firmly packed in. So first of I’m going to using my fingertips go around the edge of the pan and press down. I’m not using two firm of a pressure but it has to be firm enough so that I can bring all of that crust together and wanted to hold together really nicely so when the cheesecake is cut and served the crust will remain in a nice solid state. Once I have that nice ring around the outside I can get, I can come into the center and just start pressing down, just inside from that outer rim again using a flat palm or using flat fingers and just making sure that everything is even I don’t want to feel any mountains or any valleys and if I do feel areas where its thicker and where the crust is thicker than other areas so I’ll just gently maneuver that crust where it needs to go so that I do have a nice even base on my cheesecake.
And I’ m just -- as I turn the cheesecake pan working my way right into the center and pressing that last bit down. Now I take a look is there any areas that are higher, any areas that are lower do I have a pretty even base from my cheesecake. It feels like I do and were ready to go that is your cheesecake crust it can also be used for pie crust or like I said cookies and or anything that you are created mind can think off. Thank you for joining us that everydaydish.tv I am Chaya Ryvka you can find out more about me by going to the livingvision.com.
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