Vegan Soft Cheese

Today in my cooking class we made cashew milk as a base for today’s dessert, cherry chocolate ‘milk,’ which was absolutely delicious. You could make something similar by making your own nut milk at home and adding your favorite flavors. For instance, a cherry chocolate milk could be accomplished by adding dried or fresh/frozen cherries, cocoa powder, and a sweetener of your choice to your nut milk, get creative!

 

When you strain your nut milk, you get a bit of gold leftover…your pulp! Cashew pulp is extra special to me because it has such a creamy and desirable texture, especially for what I used it for. When I brought the pulp home I was anticipating making a dessert with it, but as soon as I tasted it, I was reminded of a soft cheese. I added some simple fresh ingredients to plump this cheese up and it was absolutely delicious!

 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cashew pulp
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp ACV
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1 tbsp finely diced red onion (that I got in my farmers market haul->)
• 1 tbsp freshly chopped parsley (from my garden!)

Directions:

• Simply mix all of your desired ingredients together and EAT UP! 🙂

These are the ingredients that I added, but you could get extremely creative with this or go as simple as just adding garlic powder and salt. Nutritional yeast would also be an amazing addition and fresh herbs are always a plus; dill, scallions, parsley, cilantro… Serve this with some sprouted bread, homemade crackers, or on some veggies! This was delicious with cucumbers! You can also ferment your nut cheese to get an even tangier flavor and add more probiotics. To do this, you would need to add a fermented component such as raw ACV.