Vegan Mozzarella Cheese

Harlee helping spread the sauce

Elliot is definitely dairy intolerant.  It makes things tricky for me when cheese is involved, but otherwise I've been totally fine with it.  Unfortunately, I had been craving pizza for a week or so and pizza is just not the same without cheese.  So I just kept trying to remind myself that one day I would no longer be breastfeeding and then look out, Dicarlo's, because I'd be going on a major pizza binge!

Then I found a recipe for vegan mozzarella cheese on OneGreenPlanet.org.  I thought, what do I have to lose?  I'm going to give it a try!  I'm still pretty strict about eating Paleo (at home... I'll admit I'm not as strict as I should be when we go out) so I made my dairy-free cauliflower pizza crust recipe and tried my hand at this vegan cheese.

Harlee is quite the little chef!

It was so weird... once it thickened up it totally took on the consistency of cheese... Crazy!  Fortunately it's really easy to make, tastes awesome, and keeps well in the fridge.  So all you dairy-intolerant people, fear not, for now you can enjoy pizza again!

Here's the recipe from the website:

• 1/4 cup raw cashews soaked in water for several hours or overnight
• 1 cup hot water
• 2  tbsp + 1 tsp tapioca or arrowroot powder (I used arrowroot)
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 small garlic clove, minced
• 3/4  tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1. Blend all ingredients together in a high speed blender until completely smooth, or with an immersion blender, for about 1 minute.
2. Pour into a small saucepan and cook, stirring constantly over medium high heat.  Once the mixture starts clumping up, reduce heat to medium and keep stirring.
3. Keep stirring for another 2-3 minutes until you have a big melty blob of "cheese" that's goopy and stretchy.
4. Remove from heat and let cool a bit while you assemble the pizzas
5. For pizza, once it's cooled just pick apart pieces of the "cheese" and stretch it out over your pizza crust.  It's weird stuff, but you can work it to make it cover the pizza.  Then just bake it according to the crust instructions posted in the link above!
    

 Enjoy!

Mine is the bottom left pizza and the rest are made with regular mozzarella.  Could you tell?

looks totally legit!