No sugar chocolate cake, no regrets and no bake!

This no bake chocolate cake is a classic Greek homely memory from our childhood and an all-time favourite! We call it mosaiko which in Greek means mosaic or sokolatenios kormos which means chocolate log. With ice cream or without we all love it!

Α classic Greek no bake chocolate cake, named *mosaiko* or *kormos sokolatas.*(source)

Maritina, the youngest member of our team, suggested making a different no bake chocolate cake -the usual one comes with crushed biscuits- with healthy ingredients, so that we can devour it with no regrets… So, in our new, chocolate article, we make a healthy no bake chocolate cake with no sugar, with cashews, bran sticks and dates, we search for similar sweets in different countries of the world and we get to know another great Greek company through its products.

Maritina made a healthy dessert to enjoy with her grandmother!

Healthy no bake chocolate cake with vanilla or chocolate ice cream… A great combination!

Our recipe

Maritina’s healthy no bake chocolate cake

Ingredients for the chocolate no bake cake

Cocoa powder	150 gr
Peanut butter	80 gr
Condensed milk	180 ml
Extra virgin olive oil	50 ml
Honey	3 tbs
Cashew nuts	120 gr
Dried dates	200 gr
Bran sticks	50 gr
Mastic liqueur	1 shot

In our no bake chocolate cake we used extra virgin olive oil “K” from Koroneiki variety produced with cold extraction, and mastic liqueur by the Kosteas distillery from Kalamata, Peloponnese.

How to make the no bake chocolate cake

Before getting started, roughly chop the cashew nuts and dates. Bran sticks will be used whole. Combine all those in a bowl.

Instead of sugar in our no bake chocolate cake we used a little honey and dried dates, ingredients with excellent nutritional value. We have already talked about the nutritional value of bran sticks in our previous article!

Pour the roughly chopped cashews, dates and bran sticks into a large bowl.

Melt the peanut butter in a bain marie: pour it into a bowl and place the bowl on top of a saucepan with a little boiling water. Take it off the heat and add the extra virgin olive oil, mastic liqueur, honey and milk and mix well. Add the cocoa and stir.

Melt the peanut butter and incorporate the milk, extra virgin olive oil, and liqueur.

Homogenize the ingredients with a spatula.

Combine the mixture with the cashews, dates and bran sticks and mix well with a spatula. Line a rectangular cake pan with cling film and pour the mixture inside. Press it well so that it has a straight surface and no gaps inside. Place the pan into the refrigerator for a few hours or if you are in a hurry for half an hour into the freezer and it will be ready for consumption!

Combine your mixture with the cashews, dates and bran sticks.

Stirring the mixture is good exercise for your muscles!

Maritina’s healthy no bake chocolate cake ready to go into the freezer to chill… We will only need a little patience!

So as long as we are waiting for our no bake chocolate cake to freeze -and patience is not an easy task…- let’s see if our delicious beloved dessert exists in other countries of the world.

The main feature of the no bake chocolate cake, which distinguishes it from other desserts, is that it doesn’t need baking and so it is an easy and quick dessert.

We found it in Spain under the name tarta de galletas, which means biscuit cake. Most of the recipes we saw were flavored with milk chocolate or chocolate with coffee. As we have read, it is also a classic childhood sweet there that moms and grandparents would prepare for children’s parties. Its appearance is a little different from the Greek log. The Spanish version is usually a rectangular cake with whole biscuits in successive layers.

It might look like this at a children’s party! (source)

The Italian version looks more like the Greek one! Torta di biscotti is its name and the biscuits make their appearance broken, the way we like them too! One difference is that it is usually prepared in a round cake pan and the pieces look more like cake’s pieces.

In Great Britain it is called Biscuit Cake and we learned that it is the favorite dessert of Queen Elizabeth! Former royal chef Darren McGrady said in 2017 that this is the queen’s favorite cake for her afternoon tea. He even said that it is perhaps the only dessert that is sent again and again to the royal dining room until it is finished. If there is some cake leftover during her stay in Buckingham Palace, she takes it with her to Windsor Castle, the royal residency.

©Reuters/Courtesy of Darren McGrady The Royal Chef (source)

In Australia, the similar dessert is called Rocky road and in addition to biscuits it contains marshmallows and other confections, in a somewhat more unhealthy version than the European ones … We learned that Rocky road was invented in Australia in the middle of the 19th century as a way to sell the candies that were spoiled during their long journey from Europe! Australian confectioners mixed spoiled candies with chocolate and local nuts.

Australian Rocky road με marshmallows, Turkish delight, coconut and peanuts (source)

Very famous is also the Rocky road ice cream, which, according to one version, was born in the United States by two confectioners, William Dryer and Joseph Edy, who opened an ice cream and confectionery company in California in 1929. The name referred to the difficult period of the stock market crash of that year and the subsequent global economic crisis. The ice cream origin is claimed by another California company, Fentons Creamery, whose owner of the times claimed that his grandson, Melvin Fenton, had invented the Rocky Road ice cream flavor. Nevertheless, the first recorded recipe is located in Kansas and not in California. Whatever the actual origin of the ice cream, the sure thing is that it was a fantastic idea!

Homemade Rocky road ice cream with chocolate, almonds and marshmallows (source)

While learning new sweet stories our no bake chocolate cake chilled and is now ready! Enjoy everyone with lots of chocolate love from Eat Dessert First Greece!