Cashew Yogurt

Success!!!

I have been wanting to make cashew yogurt for over a month now.  I bought the cashews... I opened the bag... and then life happened and I have been unable to be in my kitchen cooking in waaayyy toooo loooong.

Tuesday night I was going to make soup but I didn't have all the ingredients I wanted.  Since I could actually be in my kitchen though, I decided it was time to try making the cashew yogurt (yay!).

I started out using one recipe that I had found online, so I soaked the cashews for about an hour since the recipe called for soaked cashews.  Sometime during that hour, however, I realized that I could not use that particular recipe (it called for using my dehydrator as an incubator of sorts, which I was like, cool, but then I realized that I cannot remove the trays from my dehydrator so it would be useless to me to make yogurt, not cool).  This dilemma ended with a trip to the library where I knew there was a recipe which I had discovered some time ago in a book: “Go Dairy Free” by Alisa Fleming.

Here's what I did:

1.  Place 1 cup of RAW cashews into a glass jar.  Add 3 cups cold filtered water and cover with lid; let soak for 1 hour.

2.  Drain cashews, reserving water, and pat dry (or air dry, I did both).

3.  Place cashews in a food processor and process until they are the texture of a coarse meal.  Place cashew "meal" and 1 cup of reserved water in a blender; blend until the mixture is smooth and the consistency of heavy cream.  Place in a glass jar.

Now, I made my own “incubator” using a 2 gallon drink cooler.  I heated up some water on the stove and poured about 2 inches of water into the cooler, let the temperature drop to just below 100°F and then placed the glass jar, covered with a paper towel and secured with a rubber band, into the cooler (making sure that the edges of the paper towel were not in the water).  I put the lid on and let it do it's thing.

 

The mixture sat out for about 30 minutes between the time I blended it and the time that I put it into the "incubator".  Once in the "incubator", I left it for 20 hours and 30 minutes.  Time will vary depending on the temperature it's kept at (keep it in a warm place between 70 and 100°F).  I checked it after about 9 hours but then I had to go to work.  It's supposed to form bubbles and a layer of liquid on the bottom.  Mine had some bubbles after the 20 hours and 30 minutes so I made the decision to go ahead and put a real lid on the glass jar and move it into the refrigerator.

I would suggest letting it refrigerate overnight before eating it.  I ate some of it yesterday, probably about 2-3 hours after putting it into the refrigerator and it was good... but then I had some more today and the flavor was much better.  Just make sure to stir it up before serving it up :)

If you want it sweet, I would try mixing in some pure maple syrup or some agave.

I mixed mine with some fruit and muesli: delicious!