Vixxie’s chocolate yogopie with mocha and speculoos.
1 ww point (purple) per serving
Ah, the holy trinity. Chocolate. Coffee. and Speculoos. It rarely gets better than that.
Unless it’s banana, chocolate and peanut butter! Or raspberry, white chocolate and coconut. Okay okay, as long as there is a copious amount of chocolate, it’s a great recipe… let’s just be honest 🙂
Making this yogopie breaks down into 3 steps. All three steps are straightforward and easy but will take some time because it includes cooling the pie down before adding the next layer. This is not a 3 minute stir-pudding-ready-thing, be warned. But it IS worth every minute of effort!
the shopping list
BOTTOM LAYER
You will need:
- 75g quick oatsÂ
- 50g whole flourÂ
- 5g baking powderÂ
- 50g erythritol
- 25g stevia brown sugarÂ
- 75g unsweetened apple spice
- 1 table spoon speculoos spices
MIDDLE LAYER
You will need:
- 500ml soy yoghurt natural flavour
- 3 table spoons coffee extract
- 1 table spoon of vanille aroma
- 10 drops of stevia caramel flavour
- 50ml cold water (koud water)
- 10g gelatin powder or 3 gelatin leavesÂ
TOP LAYERÂ
You will need:
- 1 box of jell-o chocolate fudge pudding
- 400ml unsweetened soy almond milkÂ
- 25ml cold waterÂ
- 10g gelatin powder or 3 gelatin leavesÂ
- 1 tablespoon of stevia sweet choc powder if you really like it sweet!
Utensils: ø23 cm springform pan, a sheet of baking paper, small saucepan, a spatel, a sieve, a stove + oven.
let’s go.
BOTTOM LAYER: OATMEAL COOKIE WITH SPECULOOS FLAVOUR
When you think cheesecake, you also think sweet, deliciously crispy cookie crust. Now add to that the rich, spicy taste of speculoos and that’s exactly what we are going to make. This crust is thick and a bit more gooey, because I like it that way. But you can choose to cover the bottom of the springform with a thinner layer (it will be crispier) and use the rest of the batter for oatmeal cookies. Or if you are not fussing about 2 points per portion instead of 1 point, then you can replace the apple spice with 50g of melted butter. The result of that is a crispy crust like a lotus speculoos.
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Mix together the oatmeal and all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix in the apple spice last and whisk it until it comes together like a sticky, gooey, dough-ish batter. Add the speculoos spice. If you do not have speculoos spice, you can also use regular cinnamon. It has a less complex taste but it still goes well with the mocha and the chocolate. Don’t overdose, it will overwhelm the whole pie.
Then cover your springform with a sheet of baking paper so you will not have to scrape the bottom layer out of the tin and pour the batter. Start from the middle and spread it out towards the edges. Press it down with a spoon, so the batter is all snug like a bug in a rug.
Put in the oven and bake for 15 minutes on 180 degrees. Mine needed 20. Just make sure the oatmeal doesn’t burn on the top. It has a bit of a mind of its own, sometimes. Take out of the oven when done and let it cool for at least 30 minutes in the fridge.
MIDDLE LAYER: SOY YOGHURT WITH COFFEE MOCHA FLAVOUR
I choose for soy yoghurt, because I like the richer taste of soy in comparison with Greek yoghurt or skyr. As this is a fat-free alternative to cream cheese or whipped cream pies, every little bit of depth helps. Plus, soy yoghurt is a great option to make this pie completely vegan. However, if you are not a fan of soy yoghurt or milk, then it’s completely okay to use Greek yoghurt or Islandic skyr instead.Â
Tip: don’t overdose the gelatine. I did, a couple of times, because my yoghurt was really runny, and I feared that it would just leak out of the pan. But all you have to do is sit back, relax and put your trust in the gelatine. If you don’t, your pie turns into a jelly pudding and loses all the texture of the yoghurt. It’s not bad per se, though, it’s just… not as intended!Â
Do you remember how to use gelatine powder?
For gelatine to take effect, it needs three things. 1) It first needs to ‘bloom’ in cold water. As the gelatine absorbs the cold water, each granule becomes enlarged; this is known as “blooming” and become a thick pasta. 2) It then needs heat to dissolve, so the stiffening agent goes to work.
3) It then needs to cool down fast in the fridge for at least half an hour. It’s weird. It’s also very confusing. Before I made my first cheesecake with gelatine, I watched a buttload of video’s and recipe guides. Some use leaves, some use powder, some pour it straight into the heated pan, others mix it right into the cold yoghurt. None of those things actually works. Trial and error. Especially a lot of error, really. So listen to Vixxie: Bloom your powder in cold water for 3 minutes, let sit, don’t stir. COLD water. Then heat that pasta into a little bit of sauce/yoghurt/jam/fruit juice/liquid just under boiling temperature. Let it cool down for a minute while you keep stirring, then pour into your pie mixture. It may get a bit more runny, but it will fix itself when it cools down. Don’t let your gelatine boil. Ever. Ever! First of all, it can burn and it does carry that disgusting taste into your whole pie. Secondly, the stiffening will not happen. When gelatine boils, it loses all its binding power. You see those tiny little bubbles form on the bottom of your saucepan? Take of off the heat instantly. You can heat gelatine in just about any liquid but avoid the fresh juices of tropical fruits such as papaya, kiwi, mango, and pineapple as they contain an enzyme that will completely destroy the gelatine. (Pasteurizing kills the enzymes in these fruits, so canned or frozen juices are fine.)
Instructions:
Pour the yoghurt into a bowl, but leave out two tablespoons of yoghurt in a smaller container, to use later with the gelatine.
Infuse the yoghurt with coffee aroma (3 tablespoons will do nicely) or a spoon of expresso coffee powder if you like a good coffee kick. Add a touch of vanilla extract and sweeten with the drops of stevia caramel as you see fit. I used 8 drops, because I like my yoghurt a little bit sour in comparison with the chocolate fudge pudding, which is pretty sweet as is.
Pour the gelatine powder in a small amount of water to make it bloom. Let it rest for 3 minutes. At the same time, warm up the yoghurt that you kept apart, in a small saucepan. Pour in the bloomed gelatine and keep heating it until just under boiling temperature. Take it off the heat and let it cool down for a minute while you keep stirring it. Add the gelatine in the bowl with the yoghurt and keep stirring, until blended in completely.Â
Pour the yoghurt in the springform on top of the speculoos layer and put it back into the fridge to let it set for at least 30 minutes.
TOP LAYER: CHOCOLADE FUDGE PUDDINGÂ Â
Mmmmm it’s hard to believe that those little packs of Jell-o are sugar and fat free. They are so stinking good. Bloody addictive, is what they are. At the end of the day, Weight Watchers teaches you how to find moderation in everything you eat. And Jell-o isn’t actually pudding. It looks like pudding and it tastes like pudding, but it’s really just artificial flavouring. It’s a great guilt-free chocolate snack but it’s probably not so great to make this your main course 3 times a day, even though you know you’d want to 🙂 They have an insanely low amount of calories as is, if you prepare them with semi-skimmed cow milk like the package tells you to. But when you prepare them with sugarfree roasted almond milk (the one from Alpro is just SO amazing), they basically become a 0-point dessert per serving. Well, one serving is not a whole lot, if you’re like me you can down 4 portions easily without flipping your spoon. Even then so, 500ml of this pudding (a whole box of jell-o powder) is only 2 ww purple points.
Instructions:
Mix the Jell-o chocolate fudge powder with 400ml of unsweetened almond soy milk. Whisk vigorously for a minute until you have no more chunks in your mixture.Â
Pour the gelatine powder in a small amount of water to make it bloom. Let it rest for 3 minutes. At the same time, warm up a couple of tablespoons of the milk in a small saucepan. Pour in the bloomed gelatine and keep heating it until just under boiling temperature. Take it off the heat and let it cool down for a minute while you keep stirring it. Add the gelatine in the bowl with the milk and keep whisking, until blended in completely.Â
Pour the chocolate pudding in the springform on top of the mocha yoghurt layer and put it back into the fridge to let it set for at least 3 hours.Â
DECORATION AND FROSTING
By far the most intricate and delicate part of making this pie, is the frosting. When you frost with buttercream and whipped cream or ice with marzipan or fondant, you have a very strong and thick substance that will be easy to mold, pipe and manipulate. It will sit solid once piped on the cake and when refrigerated will not smudge or melt. Now…. I could have used buttercream. But adding 15 WW points of fat on top of my sugar free pie would be kind of sacrilege, don’t you think? So I made a frosting with only skyr and Sukrin powdered confectioner’s sweetener. And patience. A lot of patience. Islandic skyr is already kind of thick and holds itself quite nicely. Normal powdered sugar will always contain a bit of corn starch which keeps it from cluttering. That starch in powdered sugar also thickens yoghurt when whisked in a food processor. But the sweetener version of Sukrin has no starch, so to be able to pipe the skyr and hold its shape, it will need to strain more. What is straining? A very simple procedure that requires nothing more than a sieve (a filter) and a cheesecloth or a lingerie bag (lol!) but even that is not mandatory. Just a sieve will do as well. Poor the skyr in the sieve, put it on top of a plastic container and let it sit in the fridge overnight. The result is a very, very thick and creamy yoghurt because all the liquid got filtered out. You can pipe this fine and resembles whipped cream but you have to work fast. Once out of the fridge, it will melt. Put your little piece of art right back in the fridge afterwards and cover it with a plastic cake lid to avoid a thick skin on the surface of your chocolate pudding.
(If you have never heard of skyr, I suggest you hurry that little butt of yours to the supermarket, buy it and taste it. It looks like Greek yoghurt but it’s fuller and richer in texture. I love skyr. With Greek yoghurt I will always have to add some sweetener to make it edible (yes, I know, I am a sweet tooth) whereas with skyr, I can spoon it right out of the jar. It’s not as sour.)
making this pie completely vegan…
… is very easy. We are already using soy yoghurt and almond milk, so there is no dairy in there. But gelatine is made of animal substances. You can replace gelatine with agar agar, which is plant based. Agar Agar has a much stronger binding agent, so you will have to use a lot less of that to stiffen the soy yoghurt and the chocolate pudding. Instead of skyr for the frosting, you can use soy yoghurt as well, but it will have to strain longer. And there you go, your pie is now completely sugar free, fat free and vegan.
Enjoy !
