A traditional cheesecake is made with cream cheese, heavy cream, and sour cream. As you might expect, most vegan cheesecake recipes use store-bought substitutes for these ingredients. Well, we wanted to make a vegan cheesecake from scratch, and since plant-based cream cheese, heavy cream, and sour cream can all be made from cashews, we figured why not make an all cashew-based cheesecake. That’s exactly what we did and it turned out great! It was especially good with Taryn’s fresh blackberry/blueberry compote on top.
Enjoy!
Ingredients
- 1 cup oats
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
- 1/3 cup vegan butter
- 1/2 cup peanuts
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 1/2 cups cashews, soaked overnight
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup blueberries
- 1/2 cup blackberries
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
Instructions
- Heat oven to 325 degrees.
- In a food processor, pulse together the ingredients for the crust until a mealy dough is formed.
- Press crust into the bottom of a pie dish.
- Refrigerate until ready to use.
- In the same food processor, blend cashews for 1-2 minutes until completely smooth.
- Add the rest of the ingredients for the cheesecake and blend until everything is smooth and combined.
- Pour into round baking dish over the crust and spread around until smooth.
- Bake for 45 minutes. It will be done when it is firm on the outside and a little bit soft and jiggly in the middle.
- While the cheesecake is baking, prepare the topping in a small saucepan by cooking on low-medium heat until it reduces. Once it is thick enough, remove from heat and cool on the counter.
- Once the cheesecake is done, remove form the oven and cool on the counter. Refrigerate for a few hours once it's cooled.
- To remove the cheesecake, slide a knife around the outer edge to loosen it a bit and then put a plate on top of it, and flip it over. Then put another plate on top of that, and flip it over again.
Notes
This was our first attempt at developing a fully cashew-based cheesecake recipe, and even though we were quite pleased with how it turned out, we definitely learned some things along the way that we'd like to try out in future recipes.
For example, we probably baked the cheesecake you see pictured for about 5 or 10 minutes too long. Our oven tends to be a little too hot, so we should have pulled it out earlier. Next time, we will check on it at the 30 minute mark to see how it looks, and then determine if it needs to bake longer or not.
Another thing we would like to try differently next time is to double the batch. This cheesecake was about 2 inches thick, which definitely worked out well since we don't have a springform pan; but next time we would like to make it about twice as thick just to see how it turns out that way.
The tiny black flecks you may have noticed are vanilla. We had some fresh vanilla beans that my mother sent us, so we used those to make a paste for the crust and the filling. But if you don't have beans or a vanilla paste, you can use vanilla extract to get the same flavor.
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