GDx – Making Vegan Cheese

The GD team recently participated in our second annual GDx day! The GDx experience is inspired by Bill Gates’ annual Think Week. Each GD employee is given a “Thinking Day” — a day away from work to research a subject they are curious about. This is a rare opportunity for self-care, achieved by exploring something new, without interruption.

Next up, our Designer/Illustrator Nathaniel Parker Raymond tackles making vegan cheese…

“I decided to try to make a sliceable, sharp vegan cheese. I have made quite a few vegan cheese sauces, but nothing sliceable, and nothing with any convincing “sharpness.” I found a few recipes online for aged vegan cheese, most calling for probiotics. I picked two that looked promising and got to work.

I boiled lots of cashews, did a lot of blenderizing, cracked open a good number of probiotic capsules, and waited, and then waited some more.

The first recipe only aged for two days. The second recipe was aged for two days, then was heated with agar and tapioca flour, and then aged for another week. Unfortunately, the first ended up with a cream cheese consistency, but it had some good tanginess to it. I threw it on a bagel with capers, tomatoes, and onions – not too bad.

The second had the consistency I was going for, but may have been a bit heavy on the probiotics – the tanginess had gone into sour territory. I didn’t mind it, but it wasn’t quite what I was aiming for. In the future, I think I can make some adjustments to the second recipe to get something a little closer to what I’m imagining.