The biggest challenge for going vegan for 8 weeks will be giving up cheese.. I am addicted to the stuff. Cheese is extremely high in saturated fats so it’s hardly surprising I am the size I am.

I decided to try a vegan soy based cheese… it looked good. Just like regular cheese infact. So confident that it would indeed be as tasty as it looked I placed a generous cubes worth in my mouth and chewed. Cats piss would have been more palatable…

That’s when I began to look around for alternatives…

After some research I put together my own recipe for a cream cheese. It was totally awesome and totally yummy…. and if you pretend hard enough it tastes a little cheesy!

Cashew Nut Cream Cheese

1.5 cups of raw cashew nuts (place in a container and cover with cold water and soak for 1-2 hrs)
1-2 teaspoons of nutritional yeast (a deactivated flaked yeast that helps adda cheesy taste)
1/2 lemon (the juice from)
1/2 a chopped red, orange or yellow pepper
1/2 to 1 clove of garlic
generous pinch of dried italian herbs
A little extra water or almond milk

Method

This is soooooo simple!

Place all the ingredients (drain the cashew nuts) into your blender with a tablespoon of water or almond milk.

Blend until smooth (adding extra water if needs be just a little bit at a time)

Makes about a jam jar full. I fill two wide mouth mason jars up and place in fridge. Can be used as a cheese spread or dip into right from the jar.

Tip
It is really nice on crackers or rusk. I serve it with a sliver of sweet pepper over the top, some chopped spring onion and some extra herbs

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 18th, 2011 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.