Linda Ainsworth’s recipe for lime and matcha cheesecake utilises, as the name suggests, matcha – a finely ground powder made from green tea leaves.

It's all party of a healthy cooking style she adopted after finding more traditional desserts simply weren't to her liking.

“The main reason I started making cheesecakes like this was that I’d go out for dinner and didn’t really like any of the desserts,” she said.

“They’d make us feel full and sick afterwards, so we decided to get away from using refined sugar and packaged foods.

“Back to basic cooking is what we do.” 

Once the domain of devoted hipsters, the clean-eating trend is now closer to mainstream then ever before.

With the online community for healthy cooking and recipes growing by the day, Mrs Ainsworth said social media had become a good source of ideas and guidance.

“I find things on Instagram, or from different restaurants, and I’ll tweak them a little bit and make them my own,” she said.

“I’m in a couple of groups on Facebook for all that kind of thing, it’s so good.

“Nowadays I’ll spend a lot of time in the afternoons cooking, making dinner and other things.

“Once you get sugar and other processed foods out of your diet you feel a lot better, a lot less weighed down.” 

Like anything though, the clean-eating community has its trends, and matcha is top of the food chain, so to speak.

“Matcha is really on trend at the moment,” Mrs Ainsworth said.

“The recipe came about after I went to the Matcha Mylkbar in Melbourne a few weeks ago. 

“It’s got all the anti-oxidants in it, and it gives the cake a really nice colour as well.

“It can take practice to get the textures right, but all the ingredients are things you can keep in your pantry.

“You can freeze the cake itself as well.

“I make something like this about once a month, it’s more of a special dish.” 

For all the hype about special ingredients, Mrs Ainsworth’s day-to-day diet is surprisingly easy.

“It’s just meat and veg, really really simple stuff,” she said. 

“Eating foods that are in season is really important.

“You can grow a lot of it in your own garden – we grow out own herbs, cucumbers, zucchinis and tomatoes. 

“We’d probably only spend a day or so each work tending to it.” 

BASE

½ cup activated almonds

½ cup desiccated coconut

8 dates

Pinch of Himalayan salt

Process together until it becomes a little sticky. Press into a lined springform tin and put in fridge to set.

FILLING

2 cups activated cashews, soaked overnight in water

½ cup lime juice

¼ cup melted coconut oil

1 270ml tin of coconut milk

¼ to ½ cup honey

4 teaspoons matcha powder

10-12 drops lime essential oil

Blend all ingredients together in a high speed blender for two to three minutes until smooth. Pour into the base and leave in the fridge overnight to set.

CHOCOLATE TOPPING

100ml melted coconut oil

2 tablespoons cacao

Pinch of himalayan salt

Honey to taste

Whisk all ingredients together, use to decorate to your heart’s content! Can also add berries and nuts.