A fresh way to reinvent past-its-best ginger cake.

I’ll be honest and say that the bright green mixture was a bit of a hard sell on my work-colleagues-cum-taste-testers but the open-minded amongst them were very flattering. To my mind the combination of avocado, ginger & lime is unquestionable. Try it, go on.

The basic premise is like a cheesecake – a firm base topped with a soft, creamy mixture. In this case I used coconut oil to make a firm base from ginger bread crumbs & again to give the avocado a little texture – coconut oil is hard at room temperature so this is a helpful trick for no-bake desserts. Can catch you out though if you try to make ordinary cakes with coconut oil – soft when they come out of the oven but hard and crumbly an hour later!

The white & dark chocolate layer is an optional indulgence to bring the top together. I missed a trick in not adding butter or cream to my melted chocolate meaning it crisped up almost instantly on hitting the cold avocado and made cutting it somewhat hazardous – imagine an over-filled Victoria sponge oozing at the seam as soon as you try to take a slice. I’ve amended the recipe here to include this recommendation.

Healthy might be a stretch but certainly a more nutritious cheesecake – based on this recipe making 10 portions I came to about 340 calories each. Plus countless amounts of creamy, refreshing, gingery goodness.

Serves 10

Main Equipment

1. Blender
2. Loose-bottomed cake tin – about 20cm diameter, 5cm deep

Ingredients

Base:

Ginger Cake	200	grams
Coconut Oil	50	grams

Topping:

Avocado (about 3-4, ripe)	450	grams
Lime Juice	1	fruit
Vanilla Extract	2	teaspoon
Coconut Oil	50	grams
Maple Syrup (or agave nectar)	10	grams
White Chocolate	100	grams
Dark Chocolate	30	grams
Butter	30	grams

Method

1. Grease your loose-bottomed tin thoroughly. Do this before melting the coconut oil as you’ll need to work fast once the oil is combined with the cake else it will begin to go hard.
2. Blend your ginger cake to a fine crumb.
3. Melt the coconut oil for the base (50g).
4. Mix the oil and cake crumbs thoroughly.
5. Press gently into an even layer in the cake tin – using a patting motion rather than spreading. I have a great little wooden gadget with a small round end which is perfect for the job. A meat hammer used gently would be good too.
6. Place in the fridge to firm up for 20-30 minutes while you prepare the topping.
7. Squeeze the juice from your lime into a bowl large enough to take all your avocado. Do this before beginning to cut the avocados so that you can pop each one straight in the juice to prevent them from going brown.
8. Slice each avocado in half and simply squeeze the ripe flesh into the bowl with the lime juice – no need to try to slice, it’s a messy job with no real merit when the fruit it to be pureed. The stone will also just pop out as you squeeze.
9. Stir the exposed flesh to cover with lime juice before moving on to the next avocado. If a bright green cheesecake was a hard sell a brown-tinged one would have been nigh on impossible.
10. Add a little salt – this neutralises the lime a little which would otherwise be a bit too sharp. (Yes, the acid of lemon or lime juice is neutralised with salt, far more effective and lower calorie than trying to tame it with sugar.)
11. Puree the mixture completely.
12. Stir in the vanilla extract and maple syrup. Mix thoroughly.
13. Taste. Add more vanilla/syrup/salt to taste.
14. Melt the remaining coconut oil and stir into the avocado mixture.
15. Spread evenly over the ginger cake base and put back in the fridge to firm up.
16. Meanwhile, melt the white and dark chocolates in separate bowls. Break into small squares and place in a bowl over a pan of boiling water – no need to keep it over the heat, boiling water from the kettle is fine as long as you have broken the chocolate into smallish squares.
17. Take extra care not to get any water in the chocolate – this will turn it grainy and render it unusable.
18. Cut the butter into small cubes and add to the white chocolate. This will stop it going so hard once cool and make cutting the cake easier. You could add a little butter to the dark chocolate too (or even cream) but if you just use it to make decorative patterns it shouldn’t hinder the cake slicing as much as the slab of hard white chocolate did.
19. Remove the cake from the fridge and spread the warm white chocolate in a thin, even layer over the top. Take care to dot the mixture carefully across the top and then gently spread with the back of a spoon. If you pour the chocolate in a single spot with the intention of spreading all across the cake you’ll find it harder not to disturb the delicate avocado beneath. Again, a swirled white & green topping is not quite as attractive as a pure white top. No impact on taste though so don’t stress too much.
20. If you want to be a bit flash, put the dark chocolate in a small sandwich bag, push the mixture to one corner and cut a very small hole in the corner so that you have a piping bag. Drizzle shapes to your heart’s content.
21. Allow to chill slightly (1-2 hours?) before serving. It will keep for a day or so but much longer and the avocado will start to take on a brown tinge, lime or no lime.
22. To serve, loosen gently all around the sides with a cake slice or palette knife. Gently push the base up through the sides of the cake tin and transfer to a serving plate. Don’t attempt to remove the cake from the base of the cake tin – that way lies avocado-ginger-Eaton-mess I fear!