The maturity test
Everything else is sausage: recently we told you about how we produced our first vegan cheese with a lot of dedication. This now had time to mature and form flavor and texture. Now comes the big cheese maturity test.
So we open the wooden box, which unfortunately was not stored in an old stone cave, but only in our refrigerator, open the paper and look at the loaf wrapped in mold.
Sensors
This already looks very good, like a commercial Camembert. It feels quite firm so not like a classic cured soft cheese made from cow’s milk.
Odor-wise, however, our cheese is very similar to a Camembert: slightly mushroomy, cheesy, we finally had the appropriate cheese cultures. If you know that it is a cheese from the cash cow, cashew flavors can certainly be perceived but not so much that it would irritate.
The cut reveals slightly dried areas at the edge, but inside there is a fine homogeneous mass. It’s not quite as smooth as a traditional cheese but that could be achieved by more intensive mixing.
So now into the mouth with the delicate piece: soft and creamy it is and we perceive a slight acidity in addition to familiar cheese flavors. Truly amazing: our vegan cheese does not have to hide behind a classic Camembert! We can also identify the cashews by taste but in a blind tasting it might be hard to locate that.
Cheese with character
As already hoped, it is not a cheap cheese substitute, but really a cheese with its own character (cheap already not at all, because already the material costs are clearly above the price of a simple Camembert from the supermarket)! Whether it could compete with a French raw milk cheese and the complex flavors of an affinated cheese is questionable but further experimentation would certainly be interesting. Anyway, we can get excited about both cheeses.
For now, however, we are already satisfied and devote ourselves to new culinary adventures. Check back soon when it’s called:
Vegan sausage everything else is cheese!
