Kristen Suzanne's Easy Raw Vegan Desserts

Review of Cookbook Full of Healthy and Delicious Raw Food Sweets

May 5, 2009 Maija Haavisto

Don't worry, raw food desserts don't contain lettuce and sprouts! They are both tasty and good for you. An additional benefit is that they're very easy to make.

Kristen Suzanne is a raw food chef and the author of a dozen raw food cookbooks. Easy Raw Vegan Desserts (Green Butterfly Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0981755618) features dozens of scrumptious and easy desserts. The book starts with an introduction to the lifestyle (this part is included in all Suzanne's cookbooks), after which there are the actual recipes.

"Raw food" refers to vegan food that hasn't been heated above 104F/40C. A dehydrator may be used to "dry" out foods without excessive heat, but most recipes in the book don't require it. Common raw food ingredients include all fruits and vegetables that can be consumed raw, sprouts (not featured in this dessert cookbook) and nuts and seeds.

Proponents of raw food diets often mention increased energy, better skin and other benefits from this lifestyle. Even if you're not going to switch fully to a raw food diet, you can still increase the amount of raw food you eat. As desserts are generally the unhealthiest part of the diet, it might be a good idea to start switching to nutritious raw alternatives.

Easy Raw Vegan Desserts features many kinds of treats: mousses, sauces, smoothies, fruit salads, trifles, candies and frozen desserts. There are "baked goods", which obviously haven't been baked, including cookies, brownies and cobblers. Four cheesecakes, obviously free of dairy cheese, are also included.

So what do these dishes contain? Fruits, berries, nuts (from macadamias to walnuts), seeds for the most part. Most raw food bars, cakes and cookies are made from dried fruit and nuts blended together. Many of the mousses are based on avocado. Soy products or other commercial plant-based milks aren't used in the book, as they're not raw.

Doesn't sound good? It is better than it sounds. Cashew nuts in particular can be blended for a lovely creamy consistency, which together with e.g. coconut oil forms the basis of the cheesecakes, as well. Suzanne also has a "secret ingredient" to create the right kind of acidity to mimic dairy cream cheese.

Dates and sometimes agave syrup are used to sweeten many of the recipes. Non-vegans can replace agave with honey. Some desserts are flavored with carob or raw cocoa. Flavour extracts are used in a few recipes, but usually the ingredients are flavourful enough on their own. Most recipes contain a fairly low number of ingredients that should be easy to find.

The desserts generally aren't low-fat (though it's all good fat) and often contain a lot of natural sugar, but they are very rich in nutrients and usually have a low glycemic index. These are definitely far healthier choices than pop tarts or glazed donuts.

Recommendation

The avocado-based peppermint chocolate mousse was rich and smooth. After letting it stand for a bit all possible remnants of avocado taste are gone. The carnival caramel apple and the peach caramel pie should win over the hearts of both kids and adults.

The crazy good bars turned out very tasty, but the out of the galaxy chocolate brownies were even better, receiving only praise from several omnivore testers. The cashew-based lemon "cheesecake" was delectable and testers admitted not being able to tell it apart from normal cheesecake.

Easy Raw Vegan Desserts can be recommended for anyone who has a sweet tooth but would like to eat healthier, more nutritious foods, whether vegans or raw foodists or not. However, those allergic to nuts may not get much out of it, as the majority of recipes contain nuts. Also, most recipes require a food processor. This reviewer found out that even a strong a blender doesn't work very well for mixing nuts and dates.

The only negative things about the book are that it is very short - only 91 pages of which the first 27 are taken up by the introduction - and that there are no pictures inside. Generally it looks a bit unappealing in its plain, B&W interior, but the recipes speak for themselves. Photos can be found on Suzanne's website.