This cheesecake leaves me reminiscing over mine and Mr Shannon’s engagement. The fucker had planned it beautifully. We were holidaying on a gorgeous island, he had a vintage ring, he had champagne, and had arranged for a helicopter ride to a white, sandy beach. But the night before this magical day was supposed to happen, we went out for burgers, wine and cheesecake. And we got pissed. Real pissed. We came home happy as fuck at silly o’clock, and I took my bra off, lay down and rubbed my bursting tummy. Mr Shannon’s face became weird. ‘Do you need a shit?’ I asked him. He mumbled something and then disappeared. I assumed he went off to lay a cable that would impress Telstra. He reappeared a few minutes later and knelt beside the bed where I was laying like a bloody dugong, overstuffed with food, bubbleguts on parade. And that was the moment he chose to say, let’s do forever. What a pair of flogs. I wouldn’t have it any other way though, neither of us were built for romance. It was a fabulous night and it sure was a fucking fabulous cheesecake. This healthy Jaffa Zero-Cheese Cheesecake is too.

INGREDIENTS:

The Base Bit:

• 1 cup macadamias, roasted
• 1 cup desiccated coconut
• 2 tablespoons cacao powder
• 10 Medjool dates, pitted
• 2 tablespoons melted coconut oil (or melted butter)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (if your macadamias are salted you won’t need this)

The Cheeky Topper:

• 2 cups raw cashews, soaked the fuck out of in water for 6+ hours (this makes them whip up smoother)
• 2 oranges (we’ll use the zest and the juice)
• 1/2 cup coconut cream
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil

Optional:

• 1 teaspoon orange essence. If you want a stronger orange flavour, add this in. I don’t, but you totally fucking can
• Melted chocolate to drizzle on (I make it out of 1/2 tablespoon maple syrup, 1 tablespoon melted coconut oil and 2 tablespoons cacao powder)

DO IT:

1. Get all the base ingredients into the food processor. Tell that appliance there’s no room for laziness on this team and set it to turbo super max power. You might have to stop every now and then and scrape the sides down and re-rev that son of a bitch.
2. Grease a 20cm spring-form cake tin. Smooth all the tasty base into the bottom and make it flat, then pop it in the fridge.
3. Next you’re making the topper. You might want to give the food processor a bit of a rinse (or you could be a lazy fuck like me, then you can just dump the next load in there if you’re cool with brown poo-like streaks).
4. Grab your drained cashews, orange juice, orange zest, coconut cream, maple syrup and coconut oil and get all that sweet shit into the food processor. Set it to off-its-tits mode again. To make it super smooth and creamy you will have to whizz it for several minutes, with a few intermissions to scrape the sides down.
5. TIME TO UNITE BASE AND TOPPER! Get the base out of the fridge and smooth the orange goo on top, make it nice and pretty. It actually looks quite ugly, doesn’t it? But you can pretty it up with melted chocolate if you give a fuck.
6. Now to play the painful waiting game. That delicious creation has to go back in the fridge to chill and set for a few hours before slicing and dicing that tasty motherfucker. Post-cheesecake engagements are optional.

This is an extract from my first cookbook SHANNON’S KITCHEN: Healthy Food You’ll Actually F**king Eat which can be found in bookstores around Australia and from my online shop!

Shannon x