(Vegan) Cream Cheese Comparisons

A thousand apologies everyone, for somewhat vanishing this past semester. College is a lot busier than I expected it to be. Being an art student, I don't have the luxury of plain and simple homework that you just have to get done. Art homework, such as sketches, and also in my case, apparel construction (sewing), takes a long time. I just didn't have a lot of time to blog. I probably would have died of never sleeping if I had. Anyway, I'm going to try to post a lot over the break, and get more posts ready to post during next semester. Today I am not blogging about a TVCC recipe, but instead offering a bit of insight for choosing between brands of vegan cream cheese, as the title suggests.

Seeing as a lot of holiday recipes call for cream cheese, like dips, or cheese balls, or cheese cake, or marble brownies, or cheese danish, etc. and presumably, my wonderful readers might want to veganize their classic recipes, I would like to offer you a bit of insight as to what brands to choose for what. Here are my top 3 favorites.

#3: Go Veggie!

This cream cheese is a good one for recipes. The taste is just fine. There is just something off about the texture. It doesn't have the real cream cheese feel to it. The texture is what gives it away as fake. If you can get over the weirdness about the texture, then feel free to enjoy it spread on whatever you like, but I just would only use it for cooking or baking recipes where the texture gets lost in the other ingredients.

I must say though, I can totally get over the texture to put the strawberry cream cheese on gluten-free, vegan English muffins. I know strawberry-flavored stuff doesn't really taste like strawberries, but I'm a sucker for it anyway.

#2: Daiya

 

Alright, so I haven't tried the strawberry version of this stuff yet. That is on my list of things-to-do. However, as far as the plain goes, it's pretty good. The texture, while not 100% perfect, is at least MUCH better than Go Veggie's. The taste is also pretty good, though I find it a little on the salty side. It tastes like they used the same base as they use for their vegan cheeses. So basically, it tastes a little bit like a cheese spread and not cream cheese. Really though, it isn't bad. The flavor is really growing on me. I think it is best in recipes that are more savory. I haven't tried it in any dessert recipes, but again, it is  more on the salty side, and I'm afraid of a recipe not turning out right because of that. But I'm sure it would be great for holiday dips and spreads, cheese balls, etc. It would also taste pretty good in vegan sushi, or roll-up and wrap sandwiches.

#1: Tofutti

 

I gotta say, this stuff is still my ultimate favorite. It gets the flavor extremely well, and the texture is PERFECT. It is great plain, or in whatever kind of recipes you want to use it in. It also tastes great with cinnamon-sugar on toast by the way. If you've never tried it, you need to. This is my go-to for vegan cheesecake too. OMG. That is amazing. (Last year I posted about vegan eggnog cheesecake that I'd made with this stuff. Check it out!) I really really really love this brand. For example, in high school economics class, we had a project in which we had a fake budget and spent our fake money on stocks and managed a stock profile and stuff, and this was a company that I kept on my stock profile. By the way, if anyone is looking to buy stocks in vegan food companies, Tofutti's stocks tend to be pretty steady. They don't always grow that much, but you at least won't likely lose a lot of money. (That tip was free, by the way.) And who knows, if everyone starts using this amazing stuff more often, maybe it will grow in stock value. Whatever. The only thing that isn't amazing about this stuff is the package design. I think that the package looks a little bit outdated based on the colors and design scheme, but hey. Don't judge by outward appearances right? The package doesn't make it taste any less amazing. 

Okay. I hope that was helpful to everyone! If you make any recipes with vegan cream cheese, I'd love to hear your thoughts and see your pictures! Who knows, maybe if I like your stuff, I'll feature you! I'd love to do some features on this blog, so go ahead and impress me. I love vegan cream cheese recipes. Good luck everybody, and Happy Christmas!

CTTVCC: Brainy Bac'n Cheese Toast

This yummy recipe can be found on 37. This is listed as a breakfast recipe. However, It didn't really taste breakfast-y to me. In fact, I ate it for lunch. It was very good though. It had a good savory taste and I liked it a lot, even though I am not that big a fan of tomatoes. It has a great combination of flavors that makes each bite taste just as delicious as the bite before it. It would take a lot of these sandwiches to start noticing the law of diminishing return. (Thank you, economics class.) 

The recipe calls for:

• 2 slices bread, toasted
• 8 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 4 tablespoons vegan bacon bits
• 2 slices vegan cheddar cheese

I used Food for Life Gluten-Free Brown Rice Bread, which I then proceeded to toast. The nice thing about rice bread is that is is very moist and soft, so when you toast it, it gets lightly crisped on the outside, and it's still soft on the inside. Perfection.

I used a combination of cherry tomatoes and yellow grape tomatoes just to be more colorful and fun. You know, give it variety and all that good stuff. Retrospectively, I wish I had made a little checkerboard pattern, just to be extra fun and cutesies. Oh well. I also think that maybe this recipe would be better (at least with gluten-free bread, which tends to be smaller,) with 6 halved cherry tomatoes rather than 8. When I was eating it, it seemed that one of the tomatoes was always falling out.

I used Frontier Bac'uns for the vegan bacon bits. They were pretty good. They had a nice crunch to them, which was pretty good. Squishy-bacony-fat always disgusted me. Ugh. Even just thinking about it. I must say though, I would recommend cutting the bacon bits in half. Not literally cutting each bit in half of course, but only using 2 tablespoons. I think that 4 tablespoons was just too much of a good thing. I couldn't get them all to stay in the sandwich, and at times, the bits were a bit overpowering. The nice thing about these things are that they're also already gluten-free. 

My 3-legged cat, C3PO, certainly thought they smelled legit though. Isn't he just a cutie-pie? Not that you can really tell that well in this picture. . .

I used Daiya Cheddar Style Slices for the fake cheese. I had split the bac'n bits between the two slices of bread, and then I melted the cheese slices over the bits in an attempt to keep the bits on the bread. 

Here is my finished sandwich:

Doesn't that just look scrumptious though? Just looking at these pictures makes me want to make another one of these sandwiches. Though, maybe I'll make it a wrap instead of a sandwich. On a 10" tortilla, you probably wouldn't need to cut down any of the ingredients, plus you wouldn't have to worry about having facon and tomatoes abandoning you whenever you took a bite. This is a great recipe though, and it's highly satisfying. I hope you all love it!

CTTVCC: Morning in Mexico Scramble

Due to an unexpected chain of events, I am posting this rather late. I know I'm sorry. So, I decided that because it's so late, I'll post a breakfast recipe. This recipe is on page 27. The only thing is, it really doesn't taste like a breakfast recipe. It's really good though, and I've gotten my mom absolutely hooked on tofu scramble because of this recipe, and the Morning-After Scramble recipe. Score. Anyways, you could eat this for just about any meal under the sun. You could even make up some meals as an excuse to eat this stuff.

The recipe calls for:

• 1 (16-ounce) package firm tofu, drained and rinsed
• 2 cups corn tortilla chips
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 2 cups salsa

I used Nasoya Extra Firm Tofu again, as well as Earth Fare brand onion powder, and Whole Foods brand (365 Organic) salsa. I would recommend using a spicier salsa. After all, tofu is not exactly packed with flavor.

I used spinach and kale tortilla chips from The Better Chip. They have a bit more of a spicy flavor to them because of the kale, but regular (vegan) tortila chips would probably be just fine.


This is what my tofu scramble looked like:

Then I made part of it into a taco. And surprisingly, it went well with broccoli.

This is another one of those rather versatile foods. At first, I thought to myself: "Self, what am I going to eat this with?" And then I was like "Hmmm. . . I could always eat it on top of more chips." So, I did. And then after eating a bunch of it on more chips, I thought that maybe it would taste good on (gluten-free) toast as well. Which is did. I didn't try using any vegan margarine on the toast though, which I'm sure would taste good. Must say though, it probably wouldn't be very noticeable.

I actually only made a third of the recipe, and it was still plenty of food for 2 people.Well, actually, I made a third of the recipe twice. See, the first time, I accidentally made it with garlic powder instead of onion powder. So, once I realized what I did, I had to make a second batch with onion powder. But both times, a third of the recipe was enough for 2 people. It was pretty good though, both times. I'm not sure which one was better. I can't really describe the difference in the taste except for the obvious. One was more garlicy, and the other was more oniony. But the weird part is, the garlic powder one was more oniony, and the onion powder one was more garlicy. How crazy is that? JUST KIDDING! Anyway, if you have garlic powder, and don't have onion powder, I don't think it's worth going out and buying another bottle of spices just to make the recipe. If you feel like trying both, and telling me which one you like better, that would be awesome! As always, I'm curious to know what other people thought of the recipes. (Especially if you followed any of my modifications.)

CTTVCC: No-Need-To-Visit-A-Diner-For-Hash-Browns Casserole

This recipe is available on page 42. I apologize for posting this recipe review so late in the day, (I've been helping my older sister move,) and I apologize in advance for only having one picture of my finished product. it smelled too delicious to wait for more than one picture to dig in. While I don't normally consider broccoli a breakfast food, this breakfast casserole was pretty good. I guess I would think of it more as brunch, which is exactly what I made it for. Who needs to wake up before noon anyway? I cut the recipe in half just because I was only intending to make it for one person (me,) with maybe one or two sample-filchers. It didn't say exactly what size of a container to cook it in, so I used a glass bread pan and had plenty of room for more. I'm not positive that it would hold the entire recipe, but I'm sure it would at least come close.

The recipe calls for:

• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• Olive oil, for coating
• 1 (20 ounce) bag shredded potatoes (can also use hash-brown-style potatoes), thawed
• 1 (12 ounce) bag veggie veggie burger crumbles, thawed
• 1 (10 ounce) bag frozen broccoli florets, thawed
• Hot sauce (optional)

I used Red Star Nutritional Yeast again. I don't know why, but I like nutritional yeast in recipes, even though I'm not particularly fond of the smell of it when it's dry in the container. (My sisters complain about it every time I use the stuff.) Really though, it never ceases to amaze me that you can make it taste so much like cheese. What is this wizardry?

Instead of using soy milk, I used Unsweetened Flax Milk which is a great source of Omega-3s without fish oil. (Blech!) I don't recommend substituting flax milk in everything, but for most recipes or cereal it's great. It just tastes kinda gross in coffee or tea. The main reason I like using this stuff is because it's only 25 calories for an 8 oz serving. (The sweetened version is still only 50 calories.) It's just an easy way to keep the food slightly healthier without sacrificing flavor.

 I used generic olive oil, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and broccoli florets.

 It took me forever to find ANY hash-brown style potatoes, but I think I was just not looking in the right place. I did finally find these Alexia Hashed Browns and they worked fabulously. I don't know why Alexia has past-tense hashed browns instead of present-tense hash browns like everyone else, but whatever. Maybe they wanted more letters on their packaging.

For the veggie burger crumbles, I used Marjon Original Tofu Crumbles. I found them one day at Publix grocery store, and as soon as I realized they are gluten-free and vegan, I instantly made them a staple in my refrigerator.

I didn't use any hot sauce, just because I've never been a huge fan of the stuff. I might have tried it if we'd had hot sauce lying around the house. However, we didn't, and I didn't want to be responsible for eating all of it if I had bought a new bottle.

This is my finished casserole:

Overall, this recipe is pretty good. It took a little bit longer to fix than other recipes I've made so far, but I think that might have just been that I had to actually measure things because I cut the recipe in half. I found it very satisfying and filling. I would definitely make this recipe again, and I think my cats hope I do too. This is the sort of food that tends to make you accidentally drop crumbs, and my kittens seemed to think this was just the greatest stuff ever. Though, admittedly, they aren't that discriminant when it comes to food. Whatever. This was yummy! I honestly wish I had made more of it so I could have pigged out. I hope you all liked it too!