Mango & coconut raw cake for Mother’s Day
I have been watching my mother’s life from the sidelines for 30 years now, almost as long as she had lived when she had me. I’m more or less at the age where I would eventually assume the identity of a mother, my mother. She has been the only role model for me in this respect and though I hope I will have learned from her mistakes, I can see the influence she has had on me, for better or for worse. Without even noticing, I have adopted many of her ways and ideals and maybe having her pave the road for me through the different phases of a woman’s life has made it easier to make the right choices.
Even though I spent years trying to outdo my mother in every aspect and avoid being like her, our similarities go beyond the obvious, our looks. I can see her in myself in the way I measure myself from every angle in front of the mirror. The habit of perpetually squinting is bound to give me the same deep worry line between my brows. When I laugh uncontrollably, I snort, as does my mom and we both sleep with our mouths open.
The idea of having guests over without cleaning first is as unfathomable to me as it is to Mom. She cleans the whole house before her boyfriend comes over and initially I had a hard time even letting our maid in before I had tidied up. My ex-boyfriends always felt uncomfortable with my mother’s overbearing hospitality, which always embarrassed me. But all my fondest memories are in some way related to my mom either cooking or baking for me.
In our family the words ‘I love you’ were rarely spoken out loud, but as I’ve come to realise now years later, it was supposed to be conveyed with the food: Sunday lunches my parents cooked together for us or cups of hot chocolate and my mom’s cinnamon rolls in winter evenings. A celebration was not a celebration without a cake, always a strawberry cream for my birthday. I was allowed to eat anything and everything, as much as I wanted — though this I do acknowledge being a very unhealthy attitude towards nutrition — and that I happily did, because food meant love.
I now recognise the same attitude in myself, when I spend hours every day in the kitchen trying to make sure my boyfriend keeps getting the best meal he’s ever had at every dinner. Or when I try to come up with new innovative recipes to serve him, incorporating both Michelin star taste and health awareness in the process. Vinod says that is completely unnecessary and he would prefer me out of the kitchen for the most part, but to me food still equals love and a celebration demands a cake, as it did yesterday for Mother’s Day!
I love raw cakes as they require no added sugar, which makes them healthier in my book, and the recipes and ingredients are very easy to mix and match and adjust as per your own liking — it’s mango season here in India, so it was an obvious choice. Raw cakes are also super simple to make, even for baking beginners. It’s basically impossible to screw this up! And especially here in India it’s a big bonus for me that I don’t need an oven for making this. Plus it practically takes no time to whip this up and shove in the freezer, so Vinod wins too!
Mango & coconut raw cake
Crust
1,5dl of soaked almonds
1dl of walnuts
4 dates without seeds
pinch of rock salt and cinnamon
Coconut layer
1,5dl of soaked cashews (for added taste soak in coconut water and add that into the blender too!)
1dl of creamy coconut milk
0,75dl of coconut oil
1 small banana
Mango layer
2 ripe mangos
2 small limes for juice
To make the crust add all the ingredients into a blender. Blend until it turns into paste almost, leave it a bit crunchy, spread and press into a cake pan as a firm, even layer.
Make the coconut layer in the blender. It should be thick and creamy. Pour on top of the crust and spread evenly. At this point you can put the cake in the freezer for a while, if you want to avoid the layers mixing up.
Puree the mango with lime juice. Remove the cake from the freezer. Carefully spread the puree on top, smooth out gently with a spatula or a knife.
Put the cake in the freezer and let it firm up for 4–5hrs or overnight. Take it out at least 30min before serving to thaw. Garnish with fresh, grated coconut or as per your liking. Easy, breezy. Enjoy!
Everything doesn’t always go as perfectly as planned though. I remember this one Christmas from my childhood, when my mom was making us a gingerbread house. No matter what she did, the gingerbread pieces kept breaking and she wasn’t able to build the house even after several hours of trying. And finally on the verge of a nervous breakdown she gave up and locked herself in the bedroom to cry, because she couldn’t give her children the joy of a beautiful gingerbread house. And unfortunately, I think I take cooking just as seriously…
We’ve been having multiple thunderstorms and power cuts in Vizag recently and once again the power was out for several hours during the day yesterday, which obviously resulted in the cake completely melting in the freezer before we were able to enjoy it with our afternoon coffee. I felt like such a failure and completely related with my mother’s — and the cake’s — meltdown. How did I screw up even this most simple thing and end up with an ugly cake, no good for serving? I was ready to start crying and screaming for my failure, but luckily I have this one guy here to snap me out of my gloomy bubbles. He assured me he was eager to taste it, so we took the coffee and cake with us out to the balcony, which was the only place with light in our house during the power cut. There we enjoyed our Mother’s Day celebration together, thinking of our moms and watching the lightning show in the sky. Sometimes imperfect moments can turn into perfection too, and the cake still tasted absolutely delicious! This one was for you, Mom. ❤
