Easy Vegan Black Forest Cheesecake

cherry chocolate black forest cheesecake on a big plate

Author: Katie

This Easy Vegan Black Forest Cheesecake is a twist on the traditional Black Forest Cake you might know. It also combines chocolate and cherry flavours but in a more cheesecake like texture.

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5 from 3 votes

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Prep Time: 30

Cook Time: 45

Set Time: 4

Total Time: 4 45

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Austrian, dairy-free, gluten-free, refined sugar-free, vegan

Servings: 10 slices

Ingredients

Crust

2 cups (270g) sunflower seeds *skip if nut-free is not necessary and replace with almonds
½ cup (60g) (*gluten free) oats *optional
2 tablespoon cacao powder
4 tablespoon coconut oil, melted
8 tablespoon maple syrup

Cherry Layer

250 g (8,8oz) fresh cherries, pitted
1 cup (160g) frozen strawberries
½ cup (115ml) maple syrup
120 g (4,2oz) fresh cherries, pitted
⅛ cup (30ml) water
1 ½ tsp (4g) agar agar powder

Chocolate Layer

¾ cup (170g) coconut cream *see notes
100 g dark (vegan) chocolate

You can find detailed step-by step-photos above the recipe card.

Instructions

Crust

Preheat oven to 180°C (356°F).
Add sunflower seeds to a food processor and blend for a couple of minutes until seeds start releasing their natural oils.
Then add all the other curst ingredients and blend until a stick mass forms.
Line a cake tin with parchment paper or grease with coconut oil and press crust into the tin using your fingers (also along the sides).
Then bake for about min 12-15 min. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.

Cherry Layer

Put frozen strawberries, 250g (8,8 oz) cherries and maple syrup to a blender and blend until smooth.
In the meantime, mix water and agar agar powder together, stir with a whisk until there’s no clumps left and the powder is fully dissolved.
Put cherry mix from the blender to a saucepan. Add agar agar- water mix.
Bring mixture to boil and let simmer for about 2 minutes. Remove from the stoveand let cool off for 5 min.
In the meantime, prepare the cherries for the middle layer.
Deseed them, cut them into small pieces and spread them over the crust.
Then pour cherry-strawberry mixture from the saucepan over deseeded cherries. Put in the fridge to set for about 20min.

Chocolate Layer

Heat a saucepan over low heat and add dark chocolate and coconut cream, while constantly stirring with a whisk.
Once fully dissolved pour your chocolate cream mix over the cherry layer and place it in the fridge to set (about 4 hours or overnight).

Notes

Agar Agar Powder: In this recipe below, I use 100% agar agar powder. It's important to know that different brands use a different percentage of agar agar powder in their products. While two brands might sell the product as "agar agar powder", one might contain 25% agar agar while the other one contains 100%. While both are equally good and fine to use- it's just really important to check the label before you start using it and use more or less accordingly.
Coconut cream: It is really important that your coconut milk has a is a full-fat milk and has a high content (of coconut extract, otherwise there won’t be a lot of cream on top. I prefer using a coconut milk that contains 90% coconut extract, whereas I also tried using a 55% version and it didn’t work. How many coconut milk tins you need, in order to get 1 cup of coconut cream also depends on the coconut content of your milk. If the content is high, one milk is definitely enough.

Nutrition

All nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered estimates.

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