Why I never turn on the oven

People ask me almost every week whether a raw cake is really just an uncooked cake. It isn't. Leaving the oven off changes what you can build with, and once you understand that, the whole thing makes more sense.

Heat is fast, and speed is why we love it. But it takes things with it — some of the delicate compounds in nuts and fruit simply do not survive it. Working cold means the flavour you taste is the flavour that was there in the ingredient to begin with.

What holds a raw cake together

A baked cake sets because flour and eggs firm up in the heat. A raw cake has neither, so it sets in the cold instead — soaked cashews blended until they turn to cream, cacao butter and coconut oil that firm up in the fridge, dates that bind the base. That is why my cakes need a night to rest rather than forty minutes in the oven.

It also explains the texture. A raw cake is denser and cooler on the tongue than a sponge, closer to a cheesecake than to something baked. It is not trying to be a sponge.

What goes in

• Nuts, soaked overnight so they blend smooth
• Fruit and berries, whole rather than as syrup
• Cacao butter and coconut oil, which do the setting
• Dates and agave for sweetness, never refined sugar

Nothing on that list needs heat. That is the whole idea.