Recipe: Sliceable Vegan Cashew Cheese

I really enjoyed making this simple vegan cheese recipe. It was my first attempt by using my own adapted version from a lovely website called Loving It Vegan. Thank you to Alison, the author, for making a delicious and easy to follow recipe which I have tweaked to include many ingredients sourced from our store.

The secret ingredient: Agar Agar Powder

In order to set the cheese, you will need agar agar powder (aka vegan gelatine). You can get this from the supermarket in the baking aisle- but in a tiny plastic packet which is extortionately priced! I bought 100g for £6.99 (including postage) from a seller on Ebay called “saturnsuperstore”. It did come in a plastic bag; but as you only need 1 Tbsp for each batch of cheese, it’ll last a good while. The supermarket stuff is tiny: 6.5 sachets at about 3X the price! As always, I’d say use Ebay or another small business where you can and try to avoid Amazon.

Ingredients: (items marked * can be bought at Zero)

• 150g whole organic cashews*
• 80ml water
• 5 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tbsp coconut oil*
• 60g tahini
• 2 tsp salt*
• ¼ tsp paprika*
• ⅛ tsp cayenne pepper*
• 1 tbsp Dijon or wholegrain mustard
• 40g nutritional yeast* (can be made without for a milder flavour)
  
• 1 tsp garlic granules*
• 240ml 1 water
• 1 tbsp Agar Agar Powder (must be powder and not flakes)

Method:

1. Place the cashews in a bowl and add just enough boiling water to cover them. Leave for 15 minutes then drain. This will make them easier to use in the blender.
2. Add the cashews, 80ml water, lemon juice, coconut oil, tahini, salt, paprika, cayenne, mustard, nutritional yeast and garlic granules to the blender and blend until very smooth. Leave the mix in the blender and set aside. This mixture will smell/taste strong, but the subsequent steps will smoothen the flavour!
3. Add the 240ml of water and the agar agar powder to a saucepan and heat, stirring regularly until boiling.  Boil it for 1 minute (time it), stirring regularly and after 1 minute remove it from the heat and pour it into the blender on top of the cheese mix.
4. Blend until smooth.
5. Moving quickly, as it will start setting up very fast, pour the mix out into a round dish sprayed with non-stick spray.
6. Refrigerate until set. To remove from the bowl, turn upside down onto a plate.
7. This cheese can be frozen for up to three months but will keep for around a week airtight in the fridge.

Does it slice?

After overnight in the fridge the cheese will slice for sandwiches or on crackers.

Does it melt?

It does kind of bubble and will sort of spread down on pizza or toast, but not in the same way as dairy cheese.

Recipe suggestions:

I’ve used it stirred into mash potato for the topping on a cottage pie, in a wrap with houmous, and my favourite was in a mac and cheese- for which I’ll share the recipe soon! Any others you come up with feel free to share with me.

Hope you enjoy it!