Easy Vegan Cheese Sauce Pasta

I decided to go on a short vegan path starting on 19 November. It was for no reason. I just felt like doing. When I first approached veganism, I didn't totally reject the idea. In the past when I was a teenager, maybe yes, I'll say eww but as an adult now, somehow my thinking changed. I am not that anti towards veganism, nor I agree very much to it.

High Carb Hannah is the first person who introduced this new diet through her videos. Undoubtedly, I am amazed with her amazing results. Then, I thought of trying but again, it didn't last very long.

This time, I am not sure how long it will go but let's just see.. I can only say that I am pretty comfortable with this diet lifestyle, just that sometimes it gets difficult when I need to dine outside or eat family cooked food. Being too selected will limit my food choice.

So, I have been wondering what nutritional yeast really is. I Googled and found out that this is available in Malaysia. In fact, I can get it easily from Melaka Raya's Zen Xin organic shop. It doesn't cost too much either, acceptable price of RM11.50 for 100g.

I took a packet and excitedly started venturing the vegan cheese recipe that I watched from Youtube last night.

So, I tried out one of her vegan cheese recipes that I find easy to be done straight away without much preparation: 

Easy Vegan Cheese Sauce Pasta

1 tablespoon oil (I used olive oil)

1 tablespoon flour (I used wheat flour) 

1 cup plant milk - non/lite - soy, cashew... (I blended 1/3 cup of quick oats + 1 cup of water; then extract instant oat milk) 

2 teaspoon nutritional yeast (Gah! I only realized now that I put in 2 tbspns instead of tspn!) 

Dash of garlic salt, cayenne (I used 1 clove of garlic + paprika + salt) 

STEPS

1. Heat oil and flour. Mix until it forms a kind of glue paste stuff. 
2. Add in milk, nutritional yeast and seasonings. Mix well till everything thickens. 
3. I added water to mine, most probably because I added in 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast instead of 2 teaspoons. Gah! I hope nothing will go wrong to me tonight for having so much yeast in my guts. The cheese sauce gets really so so thick that I have to add water before it turns cement ;P 
4. I added dry rosemary, parsley and 2 packets of Mc Donald's black pepper into half of this cheese sauce recipe for the meal tonight.

I need to try this another round using the correct measurements to give a final judgment of what I really think about this vegan cheese sauce. 

As for now, it tastes not bad actually.. A little yeast-taste too strong, I don't know - Maybe the taste of oat from the oat milk is a little too strong for me. I added pasta into the sauce, together with enoki and broccoli. 

I think this cheese sauce is meant for 2 servings of pasta.

Self-made vegan cheese really requires a good amount of salt. Taste while cooking to ensure that you get the exact saltiness that you like. 

Let's just do a quick mathematics on the two different types of sauces; vegan and dairy to see their approximate calories difference.

REGULAR DAIRY CHEESE SAUCE

2 tablespoons of heavy whipping cream 16kcal

1 1/2 teaspoon butter 40kcal 

1 tablespoon parmesan cheese powder 22kcal 

1 slice mozarella cheese 78kcal 

TOTAL: 156kcal 

VEGAN CHEESE SAUCE

1/2 tablespoon oil 50kcal 

1/2 tablespoon flour 13kcal 

1/2 cup oat milk 48kcal 

1 teaspoon nutritional yeast 12kcal

TOTAL: 123kcal 

 

Blueberry Cake (Modified into Dragon Fruit Cake)

Blueberry Cake 

(Modified into Dragon Fruit Cake) 

Original recipe taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC_Kz5DZt5M&index=7&list=PLJj06SbMAVqPv389tjtSWr9RqauGN6eKo 

Ingredients: 7 inch round cake pan

For the base:
30g almond
40g rolled oats (replaced with quick oats)
30g oil
30g dates (used around 3 honey dates)

For the filling:
150g cashew nuts
100g blueberry (replaced with dragon fruit)
130g sweetener (used 100g brown sugar; it can still be reduced further, a little too sweet for me)
200g coconut milk (replaced with soy milk)
200g water
1 1/2 tsp agar powder(there's no substitution for this as this is coagulant)
2 tbsp kudzu starch(you could use other kind of starch or even skip this. starch gives a kind of chewy texture)

200g bluberry (dragon fruit)


Instructions:

1. put all the ingredients of the base into a container of food processor and blend well.
2. put the mixture in a cake pan evenly. bake at 350F/180C for 15 min.
3. put all the ingredients of the filling together and blend with high powder blender.
4. gently heat the mixture up with low to medium heat until it thickens.
5. place another 200g blueberries on the base then pour the filling mixture.
6. leave in a fridge for a few hours.

This is a vegan recipe. The only thing I don't like about vegan recipe is that it uses a lot of nuts which makes the cost of the ingredients much higher than standard non-vegan recipes. =(

I decided to try out this recipe after watching several amazing videos done by Ryoya, the Japanese vegan guy on Youtube. No one seemed to have tried his recipe before so I decided to try it. I think his recipe is going to be too sweet for me. Luckily I reduced the sugar 30g. Yet, I think it is still a little too sweet. 

It is difficult to resist myself from getting a second bite. The crust tastes really good. The filling is special. Maybe it's a little too sweet so I don't really fancy it that much.. Overall, everything tastes like blended altogether very well. Luckily soy milk replacing coconut milk does not make the cake tastes weird. 

This cake is definitely very easy to do and low in sugar as compared to other standard recipes. However, I doubt if the calories will be lower due to the involvement of nuts. 

Almond-Walnut Brownies

Almond-Walnut Brownies 

Got the recipe online but didn't save it - 

INGREDIENTS

1.5 cups of raw walnuts 

1 cup of raw unsalted almonds 

2 cups of pitted honey dates

3/4 cup cocoa powder 

1-2 teaspoon espresso powder (soluble coffee powder)

pinch of sea salt 

STEPS

1. Grind walnuts and almonds in a food processor (I use blender, poor thing, working very hard to grind..) into finely ground.
2. Add cocoa powder, espresso powder and sea salt. Pulse a few times to get everything well blended.
3. Add the dates and blend everything together to form a dough (use hands if you are using blender for the front part). 
4. Place the dough into a container and slice into blocks. 
5. Refrigerate for 2 weeks or 2 months in the freezer. 

NOTES

• Melts easily when left in room temperature. 
• Freezer brownies are totally edible, not really very hard.

Tofu Chocolate Pudding

Tofu Chocolate Pudding 
Got the original recipe online but forgot the source 

INGREDIENTS

1 box of 300g soft tofu (or silken tofu)

1- 2 pitted honey dates (depending on how sweet you want it to be; I use 2 dates when I'm doing double of this recipe)

1/2 - 1 teaspoon espresso powder (soluble coffee powder) 

1/4 teaspoon salt

5.3 ounces (roughly 150g) dark chocolate (I use 78% Beryl dark chocolate)

1 tablespoon water 

STEPS

1. Double boil dark chocolate using double boiler method.
2. Pour all the ingredients including the melted dark chocolate into the blender and blend everything until fine. 
3. You should have a slightly thick smoothie kind of blended product. 
4. Pour into desired containers. 
5. Chill for few hours until firm. 
6. It somehow tastes better the following day/s. 

 This is so easy to make and definitely one of my favourite vegan desserts.