Easy Cashew Cheese

I've been promising to post my simplified cashew cheese recipe for months, and the reason I haven't done it sooner is completely lame - I can never get a nice picture of it! It never looks as impressive in a baking dish as it did as a log, and half the time, my family eats it before I can snap a shot.

So today I'm sharing the recipe anyway, complete with a terrible picture of what it looked like after the Sprouts devoured it for lunch yesterday!

This is still based on the Pepper-Crusted Cashew Cheese recipe from Vegetarian Times that I revamped into my own version a while ago to cut down the amount of oil used. More recently, I got tired of messing with cheesecloth and decided it didn't need to be that beautiful (or time-consuming) if it was going to disappear instantly anyway.

My new version is easy and quick - combine ingredients, blend and bake! You can still take the shortcut of simmering the cashews if you forget to soak them in advance.

Super Simple Cashew Cheese

Ingredients
1 cup raw cashews
6 tablespoons water

1/4 cup lemon juice

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

Preparation
 

1. Soak cashews for a few hours (or overnight) to soften them. If you forget, place cashews in a small saucepan, cover with water and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat, and let sit for 10 minutes.
 

2. Drain the cashews, then put them in a food processor or blender with the remaining ingredients. Blend for 5 minutes or until smooth and creamy (a high-speed blender will do the job in less time, so you can stop as soon as it's looking super-creamy!)

3. Pour mixture into a small Pyrex baking dish, and bake at 200 degrees for an hour. 

 

4. Chill and serve. You can top it with some ground herb/spices if you like. We usually have it plain, but it's also nice with a little rosemary-garlic blend on top!

Sprout Ratings
Big Sprout - 5 sprouts
Little Sprout - 5 sprouts
Mama Sprout - 5 sprouts
Daddy Sprout - 5 sprouts