Have you tried using floral flavours to jazz up your dessert? Lavender is a gut healing herb because of the high concentration of the anti-inflammatory essential oils (see below for tips on choosing edible essential oils). Also the fragrance from lavender oil is hands down one of the most soothing scent. Hope you enjoy this lavender ‘cheesecake’ recipe! Guilt-free, of course.
If you can think of someone who is stressed out, I have brought you 2 other effective ways to destress using lavender in an earlier post (click here to read more). Hope you find these tips helpful in creating a relaxed environment that optimize your creativity and productivity!
Here are a few reasons why you need to be extremely careful when choosing essential oil to add to food:
There are different chemical agents involved in the extraction of the essential oil.
The herb used to create these oils can be sprayed by pesticides.
The essential oil’s concentration can be too high or too low:
Too high of a concentration means it could potentially burn and damage your digestive tract
Too low means the formula could potentially contain carrier oils that may upset your stomach
FDA approved a list of 160 herb spices that produce Generally Recognized as Safe (As of April 2016) essential oils given they are sold in their solvent-free forms and distillates. For lavender, the spice approved by FDA is Lavandula officinalis Chaix. You can find the entire list here.
Since FDA doesn’t have regulations defining ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ for cosmetics products, some brands can slip under your radar because they might claim to be ‘all natural’, but they don’t provide any warning messages about the using these oil for food recipes.
When purchasing essential oils for cooking, we need to be more vigilant about the sourcing practices (eg. are the herbs used to make the oils organic?) of the company and reading the ingredient list carefully.
With that in mind, let’s get started! The blending process will help you inhale more of the lavender scent that deepens your breath and maximizes the relaxing and restorative benefits.
Psst…If you are too worried to add edible flowers and essential oils, simply skip them both. This recipe makes a delicious raw blackberry cheesecake.
Raw Blackberry Lavender Cheesecake
Yields 4
Jazz up your average dessert with gut-healing lavender. Enjoy this relaxing and restorative dessert guilt-free style!
Prep Time
8 hr
Ingredients
2 cups cashews, soaked and drained
½ cup blackberries, frozen
⅛ cup coconut oil
2 tbsp lemon juice (juice of 1/2 large lemon)
¼ tsp vanilla extract
½ cup maple syrup
2 tsp edible lavender (optional)
5 drops lavender essential oil
Instructions
Soak the cashews overnight (8 hours)
Pulse cream base for at least 5 minutes until creamy smooth
Set in the refrigerator for 15 min
Evenly distribute the cheesecake into small mason jars
Notes
Keep refrigerated in mason jars or an air-tight container for up to a week.
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