Today I’m going to share a very yummy cake recipe with you. Original recipe can be found here (in Estonian only).

The recipe makes 6 large or 8 normal portions.

 

What do you need?

• a cakepan that you can open (I would suggest 20–22 cm diametre but I only had a 17 cm one)

• an oven

• a fridge

For the base:

• 175 grams of hazelnuts (if using 17 cm pan, then I would maybe do even only 100 grams)

• 1 egg

• 50 grams of butter (the original recipe called for it but so much fat came out of the cake pan that I would omit that totally)

• 2 teaspoons of cinnamon

• sweetener to taste

For the filling:

• 3 eggs

• 600 grams of ricotta (you can use cream cheese also)

• 100 grams of sour cream

• 20 grams of dark cocoa powder

• vanilla extract

• sweetener to taste

 

How to make it?

First of all, roast the nuts you are using (feel free to use whatever nuts you like, I like hazelnuts and they are low in carbs). For that heat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius, pour nuts into a pan and dry roast them for about 10 minutes or until the little skins start to come off and nuts become fragrant.

Turn the oven to 180 degrees, you’ll need the oven soon.

Now let the nuts cool a little and them blitz them up in a blender or food processor until nice and fine. Then add the egg, butter (I’m not going to add it next time), cinnamon and sweetener. Then you have a batter that looks like this:

Now push the batter into your cakepan. I had so much that I used it on the base and sides also.

Put that aside. Now it’s time to make the filling. Take your ricotta (or cream cheese), sour cream, eggs, sweetener and vanilla and mix well with a whisk or handheld mixer.

Now devide the filling into two equal parts.

Add cocoa powder (and any other spices you might want, I added cinnamon) to one bowl and mix that well.

Now pour the vanilla filling onto the base and then also add the cocoa filling. I tried to do a marbling effect but failed.  

The top was marbled but in the end the cake was vanilla on the bottom, chocolate on the top. But still good.

Now put your cake in the 180 degree oven. It depends on the size of the pan. If you have a 26–28 cm pan, 45 minutes might be enough. 20–22 cm would require about an hour I assume. Since my pan was really little and the filling layer was really thick, I baked mine for an hour and 15 minutes. Bake it until the filling seems to be set.

Now your cake is ready. Let it cool completely in the pan (don’t remove the outer round!) and then put it into the fridge. The longer, the better (mine was in there overnight). Before serving and decorating remove the outer round. I also removed the bottom of the pan, I had waxpaper ron the bottom and the cake didn’t fall apart. But you can totally leave the bottom of the pan there.

I used some red currants to decorate.

And there you go: a tasty and beautiful LCHF cheesecake with a lovely nutty crust and lots of good filling. 

 

What about nutrition?

The whole cake is 2821 kcal, 128 g of protein, 58 g of carbs (of which 18 g is fiber), 241 g of fat.

If cut into 6 big portions, then one portion is 470 kcal, 21 g of protein, 9,67 g of total carbs (6,67 g of net carbs), 40 g of fat.

The nutrition really depends on how much nuts and butter you add to the base. If you omit the butter, you save 360 kcal per cake etc. 

 

For example, if the cake is made without the butter and with 100 grams of nuts:

The whole cake is 2000 kcal, 116 g of protein, 45 g of carbs (of which 10 g is fiber), 155 g of fat.

If cut into 6 big portions, then one portion is 333 kcal, 19 g of protein, 8 g of total carbs (6 g of net carbs), 26 g of fat.

 

PS. The decorations are not included in the nutrition facts.

 

Any other suggestions?

I would totally omit the butter in the base. You can try adding it but if it melts to the bottom of your oven (like mine did since the nuts already have a lot of oil), there’s no point.

Base recommendations according to the diameter of cake pan:

• under 20 cm: 100 g of nuts

• 20–22 cm: 125–150 g of nuts

• 24–26 cm: 175–200 g of nuts

• 28 cm or bigger: 200 g of nuts or more

Add some berries to decorate or to add something fresh to the cake. Or a little melted dark chocolate.

You can totally omit the dark cocoa and add some berries to the filling, like blueberries. Feel free to try different versions and let me know how it tasted 🙂