Inspiration
This recipe is inspired by some Goat cheese sprinkles that I recently had on my light meal with SAS airlines. These sprinkles were nothing like I’ve ever seen, crispy, couscous-like cheese? It made the salad exquisite. I searched in vain to see if I find this at a supermarket or cheese counter in Scandinavia. No one seems to have ever heard of this kind of cheese. Thankfully I have a picture proof :)
Crispy Vegan Cheese
This is my original recipe (yay!). Since I am not keen on buying ready-made vegan/non-dairy cheese, scared of any synthetic ingredients, my go-to vegan alternative is usually the creamy cashew cheese. Inspired by my cheese sprinkles encounter, I baked the cashew cheese to give texture to salads. I have also enjoyed it on its own as a snack.
This is how the cheese looks like when cooked.
I then sprinkled it onto salads or as a snack.
- 1 cup raw cashews (soaked overnight or longer)
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- pinch sea salt
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- Pre-soak raw cashews in water overnight or longer. Before using, rinse under clean water and remove excess water.
- Blend the cashews and garlic in a high-speed blender, until almost smooth.
- Add the remaining ingredients and blend until well combined.
- Place the mixture in a breakfast bowl and press on the bottom. Then flip over onto an oven dish. The mixture is placed in a container to give it some shape. You can also bake the mixture in free form.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven for 8 minutes at 200°C/390°F or crusty cook function in the microwave (power 2) for 8 minutes.
- Check out if it has your desired consistency, it should be a bit hard but not rock hard.
- Store in an airtight container outside the refrigerator.
- To use on a salad, crumble them into desired size and sprinkle on salad.
