Cashew Creme Fraiche

Those of you that have been reading for a while may have noticed that I don’t use as much silken tofu as I used it. It is difficult to find organic silken tofu that is free of soy protein isolates and those are on my “to be minimized list” (along with 1,000 other things). However I have been missing having a little vegan sour cream/creme fraiche to top dishes with lately. Today I wanted to see if I could make a suitable substitute for creme fraiche, or sour cream. Many years ago I used to make dairy creme fraiche before you could buy it locally. It is a simple process and the homemade version is much better than the store bought. I think this homemade cashew based sour cream/creme fraiche alternative is the same. Once you try this I don't think you will buy the commercial version which is full of mystery ingredients (aka chemicals) again. Here is what I did:

Cashew Creme Fraiche
Makes approximately 20 tablespoons

Ingredients:

1 cup raw cashews, soaked for at least two hours and drained
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (start with half)
1 pinch of salt (optional)
approximately ½ cup of water to process

Directions:

Place the soaked cashews, half the apple cider vinegar and salt in your blender and turn the machine in. Add water slowly until the cashews have just been liquefied. Stop the machine and taste the mixture and adjust the flavors to your taste. Refrigerate until needed.

Nutritional information (for 1/20th of the recipe):

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 26.43
Calories From Fat (66%) - 17.43

Total Fat-  2.08g
Saturated Fat - 0.37g
Cholesterol-  0mg
Sodium - 15.41mg
Potassium - 31.99mg
Total Carbohydrates - 1.44g
Fiber - 0.16g
Sugar - 0.28g
Protein - 0.87g

Comments:

This is so simple it is more of a method than an actual recipe. You could also use lemon juice, or white vinegar for the acid. I used apple cider because it was the first acid that came to mind. However in the past I have used lemon juice to make tofu sour cream and it works great. Experiment with different acids to see which one you prefer. You use so little it only makes a subtle change in the overall taste. I hope you enjoy this basic recipe as much as I do. This will be showing up as garnish on many recipes in the future. ;-)

Unrelated note:

Dan and I have had a great day today chatting and catching up. We seem to have so little time to spend together that it seems as though we have talked all day long. It is so wonderful to be married to my best friend. We never run out of things to talk about and do together.

Our food today has been easy and rather plebian. For breakfast we had the lemony chickpea mash leftovers. Lunch was a taco salad (romaine, tomato, cucumber, broccoli sprouts, salsa, and avocado) followed by strawberry and banana soft serve with goji berries.

I did have time to experiment with a new recipe for of flax crackers. I will let you know later if those turned out. I used some of the carrot pulp from our marathon juicing sessions that we do each day. I also have walnuts soaking for another variation of a nut spread. Don’t know exactly what the nuts will turn into yet, only that it will be something to spread on the flax crackers for in Dan’s lunch.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful long weekend.