White chocolate ‘n’ berry dessert cups
Whether you’re getting ready to celebrate the 4th of July, Iceland making it to the EURO 2016 quarterfinals, bemoaning Brexit or just looking for a cool and easy summertime dessert – you’re not going to want to miss these red, white and blue dessert cups!
Everyone likes chocolate, but with the heat of the summer months upon us, I thought that anything made of chocolate will just melt. That’s when I realized I could outsmart summer by intentionally melting the chocolate before the heat could! I love dark chocolate, but it’s more of a winter kind of thing. I found that out the hard way last summer in Berlin, when I trekked across half the city to get to the Ritter Sport factory (where you can design and make your own chocolate!!!), only to find out that dark chocolate, their only vegan kind, isn’t available during the summer. Sorry, getting off track as usual. But if dark chocolate is a winter thing, then surely the opposite, white chocolate, is a summer thing, right?
My next thought was, “White chocolate cheesecake”. However, apart from melting things, the summer heat tends to make people (Uh, alright. Me. I meant me.) a litttttle bit lazier and slower, and cheesecake suddenly felt too ambitious. Still, I liked where this was headed. The next morning around breakfast time I was flipping through Instagram. Bowls, bowls, bowls – everyone is making bowls. Breakfast bowls. Bowls with vegan yogurt, and fruit, and all the other ingredients lined up all pretty like – from left to right. And then, with my thinking cap firmly on my head, I knew what I was going to do.
I wasn’t going to make a bowl, I was going to make a cup. And I wasn’t going to make a breakfast cup, I was going to make a dessert cup. And I wasn’t going to line things up across the surface of the cup, I was going to layer them from bottom to top! With the cheesecake idea still in my head, I realized the first layer my cup needed was a “crust” – a “lazy crust” perfect for lazy, summer days. I often make pie crusts from digestive biscuits – why not just crumble some up and throw them in the bottom of the cup? I was on a roll.
Next came a smooth, cool vegan cream cheese and white chocolate mix. (To be honest, it was a struggle not to just sit down and feed my face with that stuff right then and there!) It was a great start, but it was missing some summer color and what better way to get that with a mix of colorful summer berries! It looked amazing, but I had only filled half the cup. So, I just started over again with the crumbled biscuits!
Again restraining myself, I stepped back and had a look, and realized that my creation was red, white and blue. I knew I had to share it with you all, as soon as possible before the 4th of July, before Iceland’s big soccer game this Sunday, before Brex… Oh, well, it’s too late for them. But it’s definitely not too late for you to take a few, lazy minutes to throw together some of these delicious white chocolate ‘n’ berry dessert cups!
Ingredients
- 8 oz (225 g) - vegan cream cheese
- ¼ cup (.6 dl) - powdered sugar (also called confectioner's sugar or icing sugar)
- ¼ cup (.6 dl) - water
- 4 oz (ca 115 g) - milk-free white chocolate, melted
- 8-12 digestive biscuits/graham crackers
- 12 oz (ca 340 g) mixed berries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and red currants
- zest from ½ lime
Instructions
- Add the vegan cream cheese, powdered sugar and water to a small bowl and wisp together.
- Melt the milk-free white, add it to the cream cheese mixture, and stir well. Chill in refrigerator for 15 minutes.
- Use a zester, grater or vegetable peeler to collect the zest from ½ a lime. Rinse, clean and de-stem the berries.
- Add one crumbled biscuit/cracker/cookie to the bottom of each serving cup, followed by some white chocolate/cream cheese mixture, and then some berries. Repeat, so that each cup has 6 layers.
- Serve immediately or chill until you are ready for dessert. Chilling them for an hour or more will most likely result in softer biscuits, but some people prefer this.