Triple-Chocolate-Cheesecake

Triple-Chocolate-Cheesecake (or as my grandma calls them, “Chocolate Adventures”)

Guess what time it is!!!!!!

Chocolate time!

There is never not a good time for some chocolate,

So thus, it is always chocolate time…

That is my daily dose of wisdom,

Bask in it

Let it sink in your soul…

Feel enlightened?

Now you are ready to make some vegan-chocolate-cheesecake

Let’s begin

First things first, strain your tofu, because it is one slimy sucker and if you fail to get it anything less than mostly dry, it will turn your whole creation into a big pile of yuck!

Now, if you are cool and hip enough to have a tofu strainer, by all means, use it!

I, however, am not cool enough to have something so awesome (though I am very seriously contemplating asking my boyfriend to get me one for Christmas) so instead, I used a homemade press/strainer/contraption thing, and it worked fairly well.

I used a plate, with the tofu on top, a bight thick pad of paper towels covering that, a small cookie sheet with 2-3 really heavy books

 You may want to change out the paper towels from time to time, and also switch which side of the tofu is up/down

Squish!

But you definitely want to do this first, because the longer you can dry up your tofu, the better.

Ugh, it looks so gross!

Moving on…

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

And then you're going to take these beauties

Put 3 cups of granola in a food processor (I had to grind up one cup at a time, because we have a tiny processor)

Melt ½ cup of Earth Balance and then add it, along with 2 tsp of sugar and 1 tbs of cacao powder to the granola and mix

And if its really really crumbly, add a teensy-weensy-insy-bintsy-of water so that its more crust like. Keep adding water until you think it’s right… but don’t add too much

Then, grease whatever pan(s) you are using (you can use a regular 8” spring form pan, or you can be like me and use 6 mini tart pans with cool removable bottoms) and press the crust into the pans. I used a handful and a half (haha, I’m so professional and accurate in the kitchen) and make sure the curst is even on the bottom and pressed up against the side a bit.

Then, pop em in the oven for about 6-10 minutes, until you can start smelling the yummy-granola goodness

Then, melt some chocolate (I used about a cup of Ghirardelli semi-sweet… but you could definitely use more) and spread it across the bottom of the crust.

I sprinkled some crushed almonds on top of the chocolate, but you don’t have too… I’m just kind of crazy and impulsive

They look good enough to eat already!

And I think you could stop now and eat them like that… like a cookie!

But that wouldn’t be very much fun, so let’s press on!

Now that your tofu is all drained,

Crumble it a bit and stick it in a blender and whiz it as much as you can. It will be difficult to get it very smooth since that’s the only thing in the blender, but don’t despair! It will be alright in just a moment more

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew

Now, one by one add these to the tofu, blending after each addition

You want to blend it each time to make sure you whiz it as much as possible so that there are no nasty chunks of nastyness

1 c. chocolate milk (almond, soy, rice, etc)

-whiz-

½ c. unsweetened cocoa powder

-whiz-

½ c. sugar

-whiz-

Splash of vanilla

-whiz-

Whole package of Toffuti Better Than Cream Cheese

-whiz-

1 carton of vanilla yogurt (soy, coconut, etc)

-whiz-

-whiz-

-whiz whiz-

Make sure it all looks good and mixed in,

Then pour it into your pans so that it’s all nice and evenly distributed

And then, if you want, you can decorate them now, before you even bake them, by drawing designs with chocolate syrup

Put them in the oven, and bake for about 20 minutes (mini-pans) and about 30-60 minutes for a regular pan.

They are done when the top seems solid, the sides being more solid then the middle

Take out and leave it on the counter/stove and let them cool for about and hour,

Then wrap them up and put in the fridge to chill for at least 6 hours (but I like to give mine at least 12-24 hours… the longer they chill, they better they will be)

Pick Your Poison