Overview
I received my CheeseMaker Vegan Mozzarella kit as a Christmas gift from my Mom. I had never made homemade vegan cheese before, so I was really excited to give this a go. After doing some browsing on the cheesemaker.ca website, I was pleased to see that CheeseMaker is a small Canadian company. I am always more than happy to support a Canadian company whenever I have the option to do so. Upon further investigation, CheeseMaker offers five cheese-making kits, one of them being vegan – the one I received. They offer Feta & Goat, Cheddar, Mozza & Ricotta, Poutine, and Vegan options.
I was saving my Vegan CheeseMaker kit for a special occasion, as for some reason I thought it would have been enough to make one single recipe. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was enough ingredients left over to make at least another batch, possibly even a few. The box comes with all ingredients to make the vegan cheese, individually wrapped and labelled. Inside the box you will also find instructions on how to make the vegan cheese, as well as a silicone mold for setting the cheese.
Process
Little preparation was required to make this recipe. This is a nut-based vegan cheese recipe, so you need to give yourself about 10 minutes in order to soak the cashews. After that, all you are required to do is measure out the ingredients and add them to a high-speed blender.
Once all ingredients have blended on high for about a minute, it is important to transfer the cheese mixture to the silicone mold as quickly as possible since the cheese starts to solidify almost instantly. I was surprised to see how quickly it started to solidify, even just scraping the mixture out of the blender.
After letting the cheese set for an hour or two, I tried my first piece of the newly formed vegan mozzarella creation. I noticed immediately that the texture was quite gelatinous, almost like jello. This was kind of an unpleasant texture and made me hesitant to dive in and get a real taste for the flavour.
To see how the cheese would hold up, I used it as a topping on the pizza I was making. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the cheese had melted very nicely. The texture was much more enjoyable opposed to raw. Melted, it did not have a very strong flavour and blended right into the other ingredients quite nicely. I even used it to top off my favourite veggie burger recipe – Beet Veggie Burgers.
Conclusion
Overall, my first experience making homemade vegan cheese was a success! This vegan mozzarella cheese is a great alternative for vegans, or those looking to eliminate dairy out of their diet. I have tried a couple other pre-packaged versions of vegan cheese – Daiya and Follow Your Heart. Both of these brands had a much stronger flavour that overpowered any recipe I used it in. Specifically, Daiya. Over time I began to acquire a liking for the flavour and would actually crave it, even though it didn’t taste much like real mozzarella. I am excited to make the CheeseMaker Vegan Mozzarella again, with some flavour modifications suggested in the directions!