Rate This Recipe
Chocolate Torte with Whipped Cashew Cream
Nutrition (For one serving)
Calories: 5616kcalCarbohydrates: 466gProtein: 135gFat: 401gSaturated Fat: 172gSodium: 311mgPotassium: 4297mgFiber: 106gSugar: 222gVitamin C: 10mgCalcium: 330mgIron: 43mg
Ingredients
Base
- 1/2 cup cashews
- 1/2 cup pecans
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 1 tbsp cacao butter melted
- 1 tsp agave
- 1 tsp lemon juice
Filling
- 1 cup Irish moss paste
- 1 cup cashews
- 1 1/2 cup cacao powder
- 3 cups cacao butter grated or chopped, which has then been melted
- 1 cup agave nectar
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp tamari
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Cream topping
- 1 cup cashews soaked for 2 hours or more
- 1/2 cup water
- 3 tbsp Irish moss paste
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup agave nectar
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 tbsp macadamia oil optional
Instructions
- Pulse all base ingredients in a food processor until they bind.
- Press into a 9″spring-form cake pan and place in the fridge to set.
- Blend all filling ingredients in a high-speed blender until smooth and pour on top of the base.
- Leave in the fridge to set.
- Blend all cream toppings ingredients in a high-speed blender until smooth.
- Serve with chocolate torte and fresh berries.
Notes
Irish moss paste can be made by soaking 1 cup Irish moss in water for 3 – 5 hours and rinsing THOROUGHLY until rinse water turns clear. (There’ll be a lot of sand in the moss.) Then blend the rinsed moss with 2 cups pure water in a Vitamix until completely smooth. Leave to set in the fridge if not using straight away.
Chef’s tip: Add 1 drop of peppermint essential oil to the filling mixture for a mint chocolate variation.
Did you make this recipe?Tag @therawchef on Instagram or hashtag it #therawchef!
What can I do with leftover paste or soaked irish moss , is it ok to freeze them?
Thanks for the great recipes Russell!
Annika
I’ve never frozen Irish moss, but I think it should be OK.
*I love your recipes the are great, I am also a raw fooder.
Thanks for stopping by, Viola 🙂
is there anything else I could use besides Irish moss I have read articles that Irish moss is not good for you it may cause information and could lead to some cancers
I’m keen not to demonise irish moss, and am very sceptical that using it in recipes could lead to cancer.
In the articles I’ve read there doesn’t seem to be any agreement of type of moss, amounts, or if it’s the moss itself that is a problem, or carragheen that’s been isolated.
However, I do have this recipe that uses all cashews: https://therawchef.com/therawchefblog/love-chocolate
Could you please tell me what could replace Irish Moss in this recipe?
I have all the ingredients except the irish moss… 🙂
You posted https://therawchef.com/therawchefblog/love-chocolate but it looks like an empty link from my computer…
Yep, you can use cashews, along with a little extra water.
Hello Janelle
I am not sure what article you read, however Irish moss in not a moss, it is a seaweed. As a whole plant it is healthy and fine to eat. People off our cost have harvested it for many of hundreds of years. The problem is when the manufacturers isolated the carageenan (whats makes it thicken) from the seaweed plant Irish Moss and started to put it in our dairy products and many other products is when there became a problem. Manufacturers love to Isolate compounds, and when doing this it causes health problems, such a using soy oil. If you have the whole seaweed plant I feel there is not concern. If you like look up the plant and compare it to the compound carageenan. Now you can see the difference.
If still not convinced, no worries. I use agar to thicken things when I don’t want so much nuts in the diet.
I hope this helps, take care.
what can I use instead of Irish Moss paste? Living in Perth, Western Australia, no idea where and how to get this. This is for the chocolate cake. Love your recipes, thank you! Vera Ross vera4harmony@gmail.com
Hi Vera, try this version insread:
https://therawchef.com/therawchefblog/love-chocolate
Hi Russell
A lot of recipes use agave nectar and I am looking for a healthy substitute.
Ive used raw honey but thats quite thick and sometimes not easy to blend to right consistency. What would you recommend using as an alternative?
What are your thoughts on coconut nectar and stevia as an alternative?
I am confused about the relative merits of agave syrup. There is a lot of negative press about it – but I notice it is in your recipe here. What is your take on it??
just noticed your reply below – but would like to hear your opinion on any of these alternative sweeteners. Are they really any better than sugar??? Or are we just kidding ourselves??
I love your site and all the work you’ve put into it! I have to say your are the nicest, most humble of chefs! You are polite, accommodating and attentive to your readers. Thank you
Thanks, Denise 🙂
Goodness.. this sounds delicious.. makes me salivate! Is this an inordinate amount of FAT between the cacao butter, nuts, and oil?
All good fats, Denise. Plus we’re talking about a dessert that is a treat, no an every day thing 🙂
Hi Chef, Im super new in all de raw world, and very thankfull for your wonderfull job. Im wondering about the soda siphon , like ISI SIPHON , in to the raw food.
is suitable? somehow be modified the food, in NO raw
Thank you!
Hi Inés, yes I have worked at raw food restaurants where they have used one.
Hello Raw Russel!
I am a huge cooking enthusiast and i definitely adore this site and have so much to enrich my experience with!
Since I am living in Bulgaria, I hadn’t heard of Irish Moss before and when I googled it, I now know what it is 🙂
My question is- what is the reason that you add it in the cream? Nutrition, taste, consistency ( may I substitute with agar-agar) or?
I’ll be glad to hear from you and make this cake at home with proper substitute of the moss ?
Cheers, Vania (Vanillka)
Hi Vanillka,
Yes, you can use agar instead because it is for thickening.
I think I might have already asked a question about Irish Moss but not sure. I am in New Zealand and here Irish Moss was always a medicinal syrup that my grandmother would administer. It contained alcohol. I have looked for and asked in heath-food stores here about the Irish Moss that you are using here. I have looked online at NZ raw food suppliers and they do not stock it. I know it is available online from overseas but I am pretty sure there would possibly be some import and quarantine restrictions on bringing this product into the country so am unsure about ordering online because of this. Can you please suggest something else that can be used instead. Thank you.
You can use soaked cashews instead, that was actually the original recipe before I started using irish moss.
Can I use honey instead of the agave nectar?
Hi Helen. You can, yes.
With the controversy surrounding agave and whether it’s good for you or not, I’ve been hesitant to use it. Can I substitute something else for it in this recipe? Would coconut palm sugar work? If so, will it dissolve when mixed? Thanks!
Coconut palm sugar won’t dissolve as such, but you can use it in this recipe. You’d just need to add some extra liquid to compensate for the difference.
I started to order the ingredients for this dessert and my guess is that it would cost about $80 to make. The cacao butter seems to be $50 for 14 oz, which, according to a web converter, would be 1.8 US cups. I imagine this might give you the 3 cups needed for the recipe once it is grated, but that is only the beginning of the shopping for this. Have I got something wrong? The dessert looks and sounds fabulous, and I can get powdered Irish Moss.
Hi Leslie, the measurements don’t work out like that, because you’re trying to convert the weight of something into a volume.
It’s like assuming that everything that you measure into a cup weighs the same. Does that make sense? Think of the difference in weight of a cup of feathers to a cup of steel. Both the same volume but different weights 🙂
So…
I happen to know that 1 cup of grated cacao butter weighs 4oz. The only way you can know that is to actually weigh a cup of cacao butter.
So the cake should cost no where near $80, because 14oz of cacao butter would be enough to make 3 1/2 of these cakes.
I am confused is Irish moss actualy a moss or is it as the Cooks Thesaurus ( http://www.foodsubs.com/ThickenGelatins.html
) says it is -( I cut and pasted it from their site.)
Irish
moss
isinglass Pronunciation: I-zun-glass Notes:
This gelatin comes from the air bladders of sturgeon and other
fish. It’s sometimes used to clarify wine. Substitutes:
gelatin OR carrageen
The link for irish moss on that page appears in the wrong place. You can tell because in that piece of text you pasted here, it says, “isinglass Pronunciation: I-zun-glass” so they are talking about isinglass, not irish moss, which is a seaweed.
If you look at the top of that page, they have irish moss and the description under ‘carrageen’.
Thanks for the clarification.
Much appreciated
!!!!!
Hi Russell, thanks for teaching me so many things about raw foods and their preparation! I’ve tried many of your recipes and have loved them all!
Today was supposed to be the first time for me to make irish moss paste. I don’t have a Vitamix, just a regular blender, which works perfectly fine for smoothies and even nut-creams and nut-cheeses. But I can’t produce a decent looking irish moss gel with this blender. I’ve soaked the moss overnight, rinsed it, cut it in smaller pieces and blended about 1 cup of the moss with 2 cups of water. After a lot of blending, the moss seems to be almost dissolved but the consistency is still more like water than gel… Maybe I did something wrong? Could it be just the wrong type of blender? Maybe you’ve got some ideas….
Thanks a lot! 🙂
Hi Julia, it sounds like your blender is not powerful enough. It’s only really a Vitamix that will blend the irish moss down enough for it to turn into a gel.
Not only heart-opening. Very ‘When Harry Met Sally’. 😀 Roll on my birthday – it’s going to be my treat-to-self.
Hi Rosie, great way to treat yourself!
Hello,
Regarding of irish moss in deserts. I don’t want to use irish moss but I have troubles about filling texture;it’s quite fluid. Please, let me know what else I should use to get a better self standing filling.
The second question. Can I use in dessert irish moss or psyllium seeds if the kids is only 3 and 2 age?
Thanks in advance for your answer.
Kind regards,
Ana
Hi Ana,
If you don’t want to use irish moss for this, you can use cashews and water blended to a 2:1 ratio, ending up with the same volume as the irish moss would have been.
You can certainly use irish moss for kids. I would check with a natural doctor or nutritionist on the psyllium.
Hi Russell, thanks for this recipe. One word about cashews, which I discovered to my dismay, that they make me break out in hives….Did you know they are toxic? Belong to the same plant as poison ivy? I ate them every day in a smoothie until I started scratching my face (broke out in red, itchy patches) and realized looking online that they are toxic. Bummer, I love them! I have been using macadamia nuts instead, but they are so much more expensive. Just wanted to put it out there, as there no mention in the raw world about the possible reaction to cashews (I have no allergies of any kind, so this took me by surprise). Thanks for all your amazing creativity and fabulous recipes!
Hi Vittoria,
Thanks for sharing your experience, in the event it might help someone else.
I was aware that the insides of the shells are poisonous, but they are removed by the time most people get to them, so it sounds like you had some kind of reaction to something else in there.
Again, thanks for sharing.
Macadamias are a good alternative; also in some recipes almonds and even pecans could be used.
When I see irish moss in raw recipes (usually US chefs) it’s always colourless but in the UK it seems that the only kind you can buy is the purplish one which gets colourless only at the ends. I’ve tried this a few times & you can never get rid of the fishy smell no matter how long your rinse it & it always comes out pink, and usually with bits left in it because the ends are pretty tough no matter how long you soak it. Do you have any advice on using irish moss in the UK, or would you use the flakes as other posters have here? Thanks.
Hi Gabrielle,
Yes, I’ve used that Irish moss before too, but I’m not a fan for the reasons you mentioned.
I’ve always ordered it from the US when I’m in the UK because a little does go a long way.
Thanks for replying! It’s good to know that it wasn’t just me doing it wrong – I’ll try the purejoyplanet site for starters & see if they ship here, I really want to try some out.
I can’t get raw cacao butter, can I substitute it with just coconut oil? Or can you suggest any other substitute. Thanks.
Coconut butter would be the best option, but coconut oil would also work as long as you keep in the fridge right up to serving, as coconut oil is not as firm as cacao butter.
Where are you based? You can get cacao butter online in most places.
Hi and HELP
!
Thanks for sharing the recipe, I’m trying to make the torte it at the moment for my wife’s birthday cake (her birthday is in a few days). I managed to get some Irish Moss but it is flaked. I’ve just started soaking a cup of the flakes it but it looks like a huge amount now that it has started to expand.
Should I have been using less of the dry flaked Irish Moss or are the quantities the same?
At this point it would be really helpful if you could either give me the quantity of dry flaked Irish Moss I should use to make the gel or let me know how many cups of soaked Irish moss I should combine with how much water in order to make my gel.
Thanks
Well I went ahead and used the full amount of Irish Moss to make the gel as described in the instructions. It all worked out great.
I used flaked Irish Moss (that’s all I could find) that elsewhere on the net it says not to use, in the end everything was fine. It did however take a lot of rinsing to get rid of the salt, sand and smell. After it had all been soaked for 5 hours and thoroughly washed, the quantity reduced by a fair amount as a lot of the bulk was caused by gel. Once the torte was made, you couldn’t tell that there was seaweed in it and it set perfectly.
Hi Pajo, that’s great, I’m glad it worked out, and thanks for letting me know about the flakes, I’ll check them out.
Is agave nectar the same as agave honey?
I’ve never heard of that, but I’m assuming it’s honey with agave in. So I would avoid it, as it sounds to me like the agave in there wouldn’t be very good quality.
Hi there I was just wondering about the specifics of nuts in all of your recipes. If not noted as soaked, then you call for nuts dry? Same with sundried tomatoes, will it say soaked? I would assume to always soak nuts and sundried tomatoes, but i think here there are some recipes you do not…
Thank you for sharing all these AMAZING recipes!!!
Yes, if the nuts are not listed as soaked, use them dry. SD tomatoes are different. If you need to soak them to make them easier to blend, based on the blender you’re using, then feel free to do that.
Hi Russell!
I’m brand new to Raw Food and this will be the very first raw food recipe that I try. I have a couple of questions for you (possibly dumb!). Do all cashews that are called for in this recipe need to be soaked ahead of time or should I only soak the cashews that you specify need soaking? Also, can I substitute dates for the agave nectar?
Thank you for taking your time to address our questions, and for making recipes available. I can’t wait to try this one!!
Russell, I made that the Chocolate Torte for Scott’s birthday and it was such a big hit. Everyone started asking me how I did it and what was in it, and just raved. I referred all of them to your website for detailed instructions. Love your recipes so much. After trying recipes for a long time, I knew that things could actually taste good and look good too. Thank you, thank you.
Thanks, Brenda – that’s fantastic 🙂 x
This is amazing. I really loved the recipe, thank you for sharing
amazing!! i think this might have to be my birthday cake this year!! 🙂 what a perfect way to ring in another magical year!
Cannot get irish moss anywhere! Is there an alternative i can use in this recipe?
You can get Irish moss from http://www.purejoyplanet.com or you can substitute with the same volume of cashews.
What is Irish moss exactly? I live in ireland and have lots of moss in my garden grass as i don’t use weedkillers etc, is that the same thing?!
Irish moss is actually a seaweed. You probably know it as carrageenan.
Oh i see thanks! I’m from england and had never heard of this but i’ve just been realiably informed by a few irish friends that know it well as carrageenan.
Hiya Russell, I made your torte at the weekend. I had bought irish moss recently, so I thought I’d make my own paste as described in your recipe. However, the final torte mix was super runny and even the leftover irish moss never set in the fridge. After about 6 hours I transferred the torte from the fridge to the freezer and we had it as a delicious ice-cream torte a couple of hours later. My boyfriend absolutely loves it (and he’s far from being raw!). Guess I have to work on making the irish moss paste!
That’s great – full marks for initiative! 🙂 yes, the Irish moss paste needs to be as firm as possible.
I’m wondering if I can substitute agar for the irish moss paste, if so, what is the conversion?
Big thanks!
Agar won’t hold like Irish moss — it’s a lot looser.
Do you have any suggestions as to where I can get the sun-bleached Irish Moss? I do have Irish moss here, but it is light brown in the bag/
You haven't said where in the world you are but from your email address I'm going to assume the US. In which case you can get it here: http://www.purejoyplanet.com
What can you substitute for the irish moss, as it is not available where I am??
You can use cashews in this recipe instead.
Hi Russell, I have irish moss powder instead of the whole irish moss. What amount would you suggest using for this recipe? It looks fabulous and I am anxious to try it.
Irish moss powder is not the same as the paste you need unfortunately.
Hi Russell, I can't get Irish Moss paste here in Singapore. But we made your choc torte yesterday and substituted with another cup of cashews instead. It tured out absolutely awwwesome!!! Just wondering though, is there a better substitute for Irish Moss that we can try next time?
Actually, 2 cups of cashews was the original recipe so that works about as good as anything.
Hi Russell! Question: would you recommend substituting Macadamia nuts in lieu of Cashews?
Yes, you certainly can do that. It will not be quite as smooth but it'll work.
looks fabulous- what could i use instead of coconut oil? I have been raw for three years and found that I feel better omitting the coconut from me recipes. Also, what could I substitute for bananas- love that creamy texture- but they don't 'do my body good'
You could just leave the coconut oil out of this recipe.
Bananas – there aren't any in this recipe! 🙂 If you're looking for a general banana substitute then it really depends on the recipe it's in and what it's there for.
Hi Russell 🙂
Any advice on using agar agar instead of Irish Moss? I’ve tried dissolving it in tepid water before and using it in raw recipes, just wanted to check if you’ve had any experience with it and what you would advise. Grateful for any help, thanks!
Tess
sorry just saw post about this above.
I too would like to find out where to buy Irish Moss or how to use a good substitute.
From Russell: Good Irish Moss: http://www.PureJoyPlanet.com or see if you have a Caribbean market nearby as they may also sell it.
HOLY MOLEY! *faints from extreme desire*
Hi Russell,
I really wanna make your chocolate tarte but where do I get the irish moss – do you have an online store you buy from?
Merry x-mas,
Tanne
Instead of the irish moss can agar set at room temperture and/or put in the dehydrator be used instead?
I did try this out. All I can say is: OH! MY! GOD! Absolutely scrumptious
Caocao butter is not available in my country. Is there any recipe or substitute for it? Thinking of making it on Tue. Thanks Russel.
Irish Moss is not available in my country (landlocked African country) Is there anything else I can use a substitute. It is my birthday this Saturday and I would love to treat myself to this delicious looking torte.
From Russell: Just substitute for the same amount of cashews. Have a great birthday! 🙂
*sigh*
I just adore you.
Wow. That looks SO delicious!!!!