Garden Vegetable Almond Cream Cheese

Yay! It worked!! *sigh* I've been wanting to make a vegan garden vegetable cream cheese for so long now, styled after Philadelphia's. Since the Baked Almond Feta recipe works so well I decided to base it on that but tried to remove the 'feta' elements from the cheese, mainly the extra salt and the garlic and then I added quite a bit of nutritional yeast to give it a more "regular" cheese flavour. I then drained and baked it off as normal then blitzed it with some veggies. For those I went with what was listed in the ingredients for Philadelphia's Garden Vegetable Cream Cheese - mainly green and red peppers, cucumber, celery and carrot.

Now, I loved the flavour but I was left with more of a dip or spread more akin to houmous in texture. Not really a problem but it was a bit too runny for my liking. I put it in the fridge thinking well, we'll use it as a dip instead when in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep as usual I thought, hmmm, what if I drained it off AGAIN in cheesecloth?

So the next day I did that and left it overnight. In the morning I was saddened to see very little liquid had drained off but the cheesecloth itself was heavy with liquid, it had simply absorbed it from all around and when I removed it I had a ball of "cheese"! 

This is still soft of course as it is supposed to be like cream cheese and it is just the texture I was originally after - soft and spreadable. I was also happy that doing a second draining did not affect the flavour in any way, it just helped the texture.

This does add another day to the process of course but you can just stop after blending and use it as a dip. Both versions are just packed with flavour - this stuff is so fresh tasting, you can taste all the gorgeous veggies in there and makes for an awesome sandwich spread - especially with flavours that are not in there - avocado, tomato and lettuce :-)

As usual, my Froothie 9400 high performance blender did an amazing job here, from the first stage of making the cream cheese to adding the veggies. I wanted it smooth so blended them fully in but with the froothie you can just pulse the veggies to have a chunkier texture - it's wonderfully versatile that way!

Garden Vegetable Almond Cream Cheese:

1 x recipe almond cream cheese, baked and cooled (recipe below)

1 shallot, peeled and chopped
1 whole small carrot, peeled and sliced
½ stalk celery, sliced
4" cucumber, de-seed but leave skin on
¼ whole red bell pepper, chopped
¼ whole green bell pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic

½ Tbsp chopped chives

Almond Cream Cheese:
150g ground almonds
¼ cup lemon juice
½ cup water
½ cup nutritional yeast
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sea salt

First make the cream cheese: Place everything in a blender and blend until really smooth. Transfer to cheesecloth, tie up and place in a sieve over a bowl; refrigerate overnight to drain and set. Transfer to a greased dish and bake at 180C for 30 min. Let cool.

Note: there are step by step photos of this process in the Baked Almond Feta post.

Place all the veg except the chives into a blender and pulse blend until finely chopped. Crumble in all of the almond cream cheese and pulse blend some more until well blended and pink-ish/orangey in colour. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the finely chopped chives. 

You can chill it now and have....

Great for use as a dip, especially with an assortment of veggie crudites and breadsticks....

.....or, transfer the mixture again to 3 layers of cheesecloth, tie up and place in a sieve over a bowl and place in the fridge overnight. Remove the cheesecloth and place the ball of cheese smooth side up on a plate for a spreadable Garden Vegetable Cream Cheese :-)

It's also great at breakfast simply spread on a toasted wholemeal bagel alongside a cup of coffee.

Enjoy!

♥

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliated links with Froothie UK.

Nutritional Information: per 100g

Calories: 358

Protein: 11.5g

Fat: 29.4g

Sat Fat: 3g

Fibre: 6.2g

Carbs: 14.5g

Sugars: 3.1g

Sodium: 602mg

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