manna-festing cakes! plus outrageous recipe & pics

I have a lot of recipes which are works in progress. I rarely follow recipes exactly, even when i have written them down and try to replicate them i find myself 'playing around' with quantities and ingredients.......raw ingredients can be so variable in texture, flavour etc. that following a recipe exactly will never produce exactly the same result twice. And i LOVE that!
I DID write this recipe down and it worked a treat. I'm going to try it out again tomorrow, it was fun playing around with the different layers. So here it is:

Manna's Chocolate Orange

Crust (I think this may have come originally from a Vanessa Sherwood recipe):
1/2 Cup Brazil Nuts
1/2 Cup dried coconut
1T cacao powder
2T agave
1T cacao nibs
a pinch of salt
a squeeze of orange juice

Process all ingredients in a food processor until finely broken down and sticking together. press into the bottom of a 7" springform cake pan.

Cream:
1 1/2 Cups soaked white nuts/ seeds (I used half raw cashews and half white sesame seeds)
1 Cup Orange Juice
1 teaspoon orange zest
1/4 Cup cacao butter
1/4 Cup Coconut butter
1/4-1/2 Cup agave
1T lecithin (I am playing around with Lecithin at the moment to see if i can make creams with less fat....if you don't want to use lecithin it will probably work just as well without)

Blend all the above ingredients in a high speed blender until smooth.
Divide the mixture evenly between three bowls.
In the first bowl, add more orange zest and blend again. This is layer 1. Save a little of layer one to make swirls on top of layer 3.
Layer 2: Add 1/4 Cup goji berries and 1/4 Cup goji berries and blend.
Layer 3: Add 1/4 Cup cacao powder, a pinch of cayenne and 2 drops of organic orange essential oil.

Spread layer 1 onto the base. Return to the fridge to set before spreding the next layer on. Same procedure for layers 2 & 3. Play with marbling, swirling, & other creative rearrangements of the layers.....



Cake Delivery :) This one consisted of layers of almond lucuma biscuit, orange vanilla cream, blackberry jelly, mango vanilla custard with a mango glaze......and white raspberries for decoration. It's the closest i've come to making raw trifle. I've been wondering how to make a raw trifle for ages now.....and with the discovery of agar-agar i'm nearly there!


Cakes @ Manna

Manna-festing reality

All Manna of delicious raw goodies in the counter.....nori wraps, pizza, burgers, salads, dips.....

A Gingerbread Man experiment. I used the ginger-pecan crust from the pear&pecan pie recipe. I forgot to take a pic of the finished items. They look so cute with currant eyes and buttons!