Rhubarb season is coming to an end but I think there’s juuust enough time to squeeze in one last recipe. This vegan rhubarb cheesecake looks beautiful, tastes delicious and is surprisingly simple to make with just a few ingredients.

Rhubarb isn’t an ingredient that we can easily get our hands on in Spain. On the rare occasion that I do manage to find it at an organic market, the price is exorbitant as it’s imported from Germany and usually well past its freshest.

We flipped out one day when I saw a rhubarb and strawberry tart on the menu at a local “gourmet” flexitarian restaurant but, alas, it was all wrong. They put waaaaay to much sugar in it and all the lovely sourness of the rhubarb was lost.

What’s the point of putting rhubarb in at all if you’re going to smother it in sugar? It’s all about the balance of sweet and sour.

So ever since I’ve been determined to give my Spanish husband a true rhubarb experience. We arrived in Canada just in the nick of time to pick up some healthy-looking, locally grown pink stalks from the market before they’re gone for the year.

I was somewhat surprised that he didn’t make a sour-puss face when taking his first bite from a fresh stalk without sugar, I certainly did. He seems to like it, which is a good thing because I love experimenting with ingredients that are not usually readily available to me. So this vegan rhubarb cheesecake recipe is my first creation.

This dessert is so simple: a basic cashew cheesecake on a date-graham base and strips of rhubarb first softened in sugar water and then latticed on top.

I wish I could take the credit for coming up with the idea of latticing rhubarb but in fact I saw it on Pinterest. Allie from Baking a Moment and her rhubarb tart was the inspiration for my vegan rhubarb cheesecake. She put her rhubarb lattice on a frangipane filling, which sounds delicious and wouldn’t be impossible to veganize either.