Cashew “Cheese” Sauce

Cashew Cheese Sauce over zucchini pasta!

This is an AMAZING, AMAZING recipe for cashew cheese sauce. So many vegan recipes of cashew cheese sauce call for olive oil as well. People…YOU DO NOT NEED OLIVE OIL FOR THIS! Cashews are full of (good) fat and are creamy enough in texture to hold PERFECTLY as a base, no additional oil needed. IF the sauce is too thick, you water it down with…water! Not oil! Whew, ok, glad we got that all cleared up! Rant = over. 🙂

By the way, you can eat this alone, use this as a savory dip for veggies, or use it as cheese sauce to put on zucchini noodles to make cheesy, creamy vegan pasta! (as pictured above)

You will need:

– 1 cup of soaked cashews (details below)

– 1/4 cup nutritional yeast (for more information on what this is, see my blog about nutritional yeast)

– 1/4 to 1/2 red bell pepper

– 1/4 cup water

– 2 tsp onion powder

– 1 clove garlic or 1 tsp minced garlic (these come in glass jars at the store)

– 1 tsp sesame seeds

– 1/2 tsp tumeric

– bit of salt

Optional:

2 tbsp pine nuts

3 scallions

Step 1:

– Soak 1 cup of cashews in 3 cups water for 4 to 6 hours. This is to soften them, as well as for health reasons! (See my blog post: Soak your Nuts! )

After the cashews are soaked, put them into a high powered blender along with the rest of the ingredients. Pulse/blend for several minutes, making sure to push the mixture around so that it is totally blended. The mixture should be thick and creamy, with a slightly pale yellow/pink color, like so: