Vegan and gluten-free lingonberry cheesecake

Vegan cheesecake is easy to make from vegan versions of cream cheese and whipped cream. This cheesecake gets its Christmassy flavors from buckwheat gingerbread cookies and lingonberries which have been used in this recipe in many different forms. Lingonberry is a nutritious Nordic superberry which has numerous health benefits from fighting obesity to being rich in antioxidants.

Valo24h roasted ground flaxseed + lingonberry in the cookie base adds fibres and essential omega-3 fatty acids to the cake. I also sprinkled some Biokia dried lingonberries on the crust which bring a slightly tart kick to the otherwise soft and creamy cake. You can add some extra vitamins by decorating the cake with Biokia lingonberry powder, which has a beautiful red color. Try also decorating the cake with your favorite chocolate.

Agar-agar and Dr. Oetker Vege-Gel are plant-based setting agents and good options for gelatin. In this recipe, I used vege-gel which was easy to use and made the cake set well.

Tip: the whole cane sugar used in this recipe changes the color of the cake to slightly darker. If you want to keep the color a clearer pink, use white granulated sugar.

Ingredients

Cookie base:

• 200 g buckwheat gingerbread cookies
• 75 g vegan margarine
• 3 tbsp Valo24h roasted ground flaxseed + lingonberry
• 3 tbsp Biokia dried lingonberry

Filling:

• 2 dl vegan whipped cream, e.g. soy whip
• 300 g vegan cream cheese
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 dl pureed lingonberries (about 200 g berries)
• 2 dl whole cane sugar
• 1 can (400 ml) refrigerator-cold coconut milk
• 3 Dr. Oetker vege-gel gelatin sachets

Decoration:

• Biokia lingonberry powder, chocolate etc.

How to prepare

1. Line a 20 cm springform tin with baking paper and grease the sides of the tin with margarine.
2. Melt the margarine in a pan and crush the gingerbread cookies in a food processor. Mix the crushed cookies, melted margarine and the flaxseed together. Press the mixture onto the bottom of the tin, sprinkle the dried lingonberries on the cookie base and put the tin in the fridge.
3. Whisk the soy whip until fluffy and move aside.
4. Whisk the cream cheese until even and add the lemon juice.
5. Mash the lingonberries in a pan with a hand blender and add the sugar. Spoon the solid part of the refrigerator-cold coconut milk into the pan so that there will be 3 deciliters of liquid in the pan and. Mix until even. Add three sachets of vege-gel and bring the mixture to boil while whisking with a hand mixer until the liquid clarifies.
6. Whisk the lingonberry-coconut mixture with the cream cheese. When the mixture containing vege-gel cools down it sets quickly, so be fast in this phase. Finally mix the soy whip with the rest of the mixture and pour it on the cookie base. Put the cake in the fridge to solidify for an hour.
7. Sieve lingonberry powder on the cake and decorate as you prefer.