Happy Accident Pizza Cheeze Sauce - A Raw Vegan Cashew Cheese Dip and Spread that will make your mouth water!
Ok y'all!
There may be a recipe out there for this, but as far as I'm concerned, this is a kitchen original.
I was simply trying to make a basic cream cheese spread with cashews and then I added oregano and basil. Then I thought to myself that there is no way i can leave out the sun dried tomatoes!
I try to do low fat so I tend to only eat small amounts of things like this and eat them during the evening so the mornings are supportive of the liver, but I HAD to share this recipe!!
Ingredients:
1c "raw" cashews
6 sun dried tomatoes (various sizes ok)
1 lemon
1 clove garlic (or 1 tsp garlic powder)
1tsp each of onion powder, dried basil, dried oregano, nutritional yeast (Nooch optional and can add more herbs to taste if you'd like)
Also optional: pinch of salt to taste (or atlantic dulse granule salt replacement), one probiotic capsule
Instructions:
1) Place cashews in warm water to soak for 2-4 hours
2) Cut up half of your sun dried tomatoes into smaller bits and soak them with the cashews. Cut up the other half and place them to the side
3) After soaking, add the cashews and half tomatoes to a personal blender (mine is shown) or a high speed blender. I find I like to use my vitamix for volumes larger than one cup and the personal blender for these smaller volumes.
4) Squeeze in the lemon and add the garlic, onion powder, basil, oregano, nooch, salt or dulse, and probiotic capsule along with 1-2 TBS of water and blend thoroughly.
**You may need to stop and add more water so it blends properly but be sure to add slowly 1TBS at a time so as not to water it down.
5) When it is done blending, scrape out of the blender with a spatula and mix in your extra diced sun dried tomato
6) Optional: top with sun drieds, green onion, minced dried onion or garlic, basil, oregano, etc.
It's ready to go as a veggie or cracker dip!
You could actually even put this in a piping bag and drizzle this over raw or cooked whole-food plant-based pizza!
Optional modification 1: I usually do this with my dressings but I have NOT tried it with this spread... but to add volume and to lower caloric density, after step 4 and before step 5, you could peel and dice a SMALL yellow or green zucchini and add it to the blender to thin out the spread without making it watery or drastically altering the flavor.
Optional modification 2: THIS IS INSTEAD OF MODIFICATION 1! I WOULD NOT DO BOTH!
Place the blended contents into a bowl or on a silicone dehydrator mat and dehydrate at 115 for several hours in order to turn this dip into more of a drier (but not dried out) cheese spread!
Enjoy!
And don't forget to let me know what you think!
IG: @VitalityHolisticHW
FB: @CourtneySommaVHHW
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