Garwood-Gowers Leah Violet - Raw cake: beautiful, nutritious and indulgent raw desserts, treats, smoothies and elixirs

RAW

CAKE

Daisy Kristiansen

Leah Garwood-Gowers

of THE HARDIHOOD

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This book is for those new to raw food, the experimental and those who are simply excited about getting more nourishment from their sweet treats.

Back in 2014, when we made our first raw chocolate brownies, we were absolute beginners all we knew was that we wanted to make beautiful desserts using nothing but natural ingredients. The only rule we had was that raw cake by The Hardihood had to be abundant and flavorsome and never bland or boring. Through a lot of trial, error and spilt nut milk, we got to grips first with the basics and then with the complexities of raw dessert-making.

Since then, The Hardihood has become known for its crisp, minimal, luxurious aesthetic. Here we want to share with you how we created our products, our journey, and the tips and techniques that weve picked up along the way. Forget everything you thought you knew about making cakes without butter, eggs and flour were here to give raw a good name! Here well share our collection of recipes for raw cheesecake, chocolate indulgences, ice creams, pudding pots, breakfast bowls, smoothies, tonics and superfood blends.

Like a lot of things in life our most brilliant breakthroughs have been born from the ashes of disaster. Weve had a lot of fun, though, and we try not to take cake-making too seriously. Its this lightheartedness that we want to pass on to you. Dont be afraid of failure. Youre working with delicious, wholesome ingredients; however it looks in the end, we promise itll taste great. Relax and enjoy it everything tastes better when served with a smile.

Weve been friends for nearly a decade, during most of which we lived together in an East London warehouse, back when rent was cheap. We met at a fancy dinner party that wed both been persuaded to go to and it wasnt long before we realized that we were the only ones at the table giggling at each others jokes. We took the long bus ride home to Hackney together and havent stopped laughing since.

We didnt know, at first, that we were destined for a life of raw cake. Before dreaming up The Hardihood we worked in fashion and in life-style journalism. Like any self-respecting city dwellers, we were passionate about Londons diverse food scene; wed try somewhere new every week and delight in sharing our findings. Getting to know London through its best-loved dining spots we looked for innovative menus, fresh food and good vibes.

Soon we began to notice a rise in LA-inspired cold-press juice bars and Sydney-style cafs with a focus on wellness, and as our curiosity prompted us to travel around London for a taste of the good life, our intrigue grew with each feel-good food spot that we visited. The more far-out the dish, the more inspired we were; nut milk, matcha lattes, chia seeds, raw cacao it was all new to us and we loved it. We discovered ayurveda, healing foods, holistic health and raw cuisine, sampled medicinal mushrooms, fermented vegetables and powdered roots and drank charcoal infusions. We felt like the world was onto something; people were beginning to look at food in a different way, rejoicing in getting their five-a-day instead of being burdened by it. Accompanied by our New Years resolution to give up refined sugar, this felt like an awakening. We became immersed in the idea of wellness and wondered why our local neighborhood didnt have more to offer. Growing tired of the trek across town, we decided to experiment with our own creations instead. We bought a food processor, a shed-load of dates, nuts and coconut oil, and got to work.

Looking back now, we laugh at our first attempts to master raw desserts our trials mostly included chucking everything into a blender and hoping for the best. There were soggy cheesecakes, droopy brownies and crumbly flapjacks, but miraculously, we werent deterred. We loved this new approach to baking and were as excited about the journey as we were about the destination.

In the early days we formulated creations from our kitchens at home, as although we no longer lived together our houses were a five-minute walk away. Wed spend all of our spare time trying out new recipes, sourcing ingredients and reading up on techniques. We bought the books and became friendly with our local greengrocers so that theyd let us purchase in bulk. We tested everything we made on our male friends as well as female, because we knew that when it came to cake they wouldnt really care that something was good for them, we knew theyd just give it to us straight. We were adamant that our cakes would always be absurdly delicious, not just a free-from alternative.

Because our creations are so visual we documented the whole thing on Instagram from the start; we learned how to style the cakes and became enthralled with kitchenware, ceramics, tea towels you name it. We built up a repertoire of recipes that we were proud of and began to receive orders, first from our friends, then from people whod heard about us through word of mouth or online. As the weeks went by wed make an increasing number of cakes, getting more adventurous with each order.

In the winter of 2015 we were invited to sell cakes at Paris Fashion Week. We were delighted and agreed immediately, thinking wed figure out the logistics later. In the end we took the Eurostar with seven suitcases and the help of Daisys husband. We had our ingredients delivered to a depot on the outskirts of Paris and used Airbnb to transform someones kitchen into a production unit. It was probably one of our most brilliantly ridiculous adventures to date, topped only by returning the following year by car and doing the same thing all over again. Introducing the international fashion crowd to raw cake was transformational and weve worked hand in hand with the fashion industry ever since.

We outgrew our home kitchens pretty quickly and soon began looking for something more functional. Our only prerequisites were that the space would have good natural light and plenty of room for fridges, but aside from that we were happy to have any space that we could call our own. As it happens, we got lucky, really lucky, and we moved into a studio in the center of the area we had set out to transform. We have a skylight, exposed beams and a garden, and we definitely know how good weve got it.

Signing the lease on our own studio kitchen was pivotal. We were able to dedicate all of our time to our passion, filling the cupboards with all sorts of superfoods, herbs and tinctures. We hired our first employee and became a tiny team of three, learning a little bit more each day about creating beautiful desserts using natural, raw ingredients.