Post Punk Kitchen Forum

For almond-based cheeses, because almonds were £2 for 700g over Christmas, will the world end if I leave the skins on? I'm just lazy.

I cultured it for 70 or so hours, but I guess maybe my kitchen isn't warm enough. This was my absolute first time doing something like this though, so I'll just keep trying.

The cream cheese is big huge leaps beyond Tofutti. I will finally eat a bagel and like it for the first time since I've been vegan.

So I made and cultured the sour cream and it's okay. Still tastes a bit like cashews, but I'm cool with that. Unfortuantely I cannot find my cheesecloth or my nut milk bag. I just reorganized my pantry and I KNOW they were in there, but now I can't find them in any logical place. So I have unstrained sour cream for now.

If it tastes like cashews, culture it a big longer. I don't have fancy cheesecloth and just use a thin clean tea towel. Works like a charm.

Hi again, everybody!

Well, my cheese making stride was interrupted by the holidays, but I'm back in the saddle and still trying to solve my yogurt dilemma. Store bought soy yogurts don't seem to be working for me. I've been perusing online for a vegan starter, but wondered if one brand is better than another. I'm in the US, so something I can buy here in the States (and preferably online) would be best.

Also, do any of you have any advice about starters in general? How much to add to the homemade yogurt recipe in the book, etc.?

Thanks! :)

I made a stovetop mac using the last of our smokey take on the melty cheddar and a bit of a beer cheese that was a weird take on a chia mozz. experiment and it was soooooo good and creamy! I'm also really excited about a hard gruyere that's firming up in the fridge.

We are having a very cold winter here in northern California, and my kitchen has been pretty cool. The cheddar takes longer than some of the other cheeses to culture, and I have a batch that has been going now for 4 days that's still not sharp enough. When it is ready, it will thicken some and have air bubbles. It will also take on a whole new flavor.

Am confused...there's no tapioca in the sharp cheddar. Do you mean the air-dried cheddar? Also, I've noticed that cold temperatures with high humidity are the worst for making cheese. We have had an unseasonably cold and rainy winter here, and this affected the culturing quite a bit. The best temperature for culturing is around 70 degrees. Then to age, aroudn 50 - 55 (F). After reading about people's problems, I have been using the fridge as a place to air-dry, and it seems to work well for folks.

HI,

Can anyone advise on culturing using Coconut milk kefir? I bought some So Delicious brand because the store was out of yogurt AND vegan culture/starter. I am using it to try to culture both almond milk and coconut cream. They smell like yogurt, but dont really taste like it. They have been sitting in warm areas for about 12 hours now. Anyone else tried this?

Daphne

It did have bubbles and got "bigger" in volume, but maybe not enough. If only I had left it out a little longer. Oh well, next time.

Sorry, not tapioca- I forget, agar? Carregenan? I need to give the sharp one another try really.

Yeah my kitchen is pretty cold right now so next time I will definitely leave them out a bit longer.
What's weird about the cheeses is that I had no problems eating the Boursin, but just thinking about eating the Brie still makes me feel queasy. The only real difference between the two of them is the coconut oil, so I wonder if that was the cause, but I can't imagine coconut oil going bad? It didn't smell or taste weird or anything.

To me, the brie does have a kind of a 'weird' taste, but that's actually what I love about it, it's just like camembert or something, which also took some getting used to before I really started to like it. Maybe the combination of the unfamiliar taste and your worries about the cheese having gone bad made you feel queasy?

Actually the taste was fine, although I would have liked it to be a bit stronger. My bf really loved the brie, but he felt sick after eating it as well, so I don't think the taste was the problem. Anyway, I have put the rest of the brie in the freezer, so I will try again in some time.

I had an interesting rejuvelac experience. I finished making it last night - it had that kinda lemony smell and taste, anyway, so I'm pretty sure it was ready. My fiance smelled and tasted it and he insisted that it was nothing like lemon, but rather like something that has gone bad. Now I wonder whether the folks here who said that their rejuvelac smelled bad and had therefore assumed it was no good were wrong?

I guess my advice to people with that problem is, get a second or third opinion before you toss it. Or maybe buy some rejuvelac, if you can, for comparison.

Mine always smelt like chemical lemon flavouring, like when you get kitchen spray that's "lemony fresh" or like deliciously dirty cheap chemical "lemonade-style carbonated beverage". I call that near enough.

So far I have made:

Sharp cheddar: I didn't get the texture right, but this was my first attempt. It was delicious on apples
Cream cheese: I don't think I cultured it long enough, reading this thread has inspired me to try this again. My first attempt still tasted too much of cashews.
Gruyere fondue: Loved it! We had it with hunks of bread, steamed green beans and tiny potatoes and it was delicious. I found it needed quite a bit more water/wine to get the right texture, but this was easy to eyeball. The next day the leftovers were this amazing creamy spread with a little wine flavor that I couldn't stop eating.
Air dried emmentaller: Still have half a round of this in my fridge. It's delicious, but not what I was expecting. It doesn't taste similar to a Swiss at all, it's not nutty in that way. It's creamy and mild and rich - almost slightly sweet. I've been feeding little tastes to omnivore friends, who have all loved it. Someone said it was almost like a dessert cheese. It's still fairly soft, but firm enough to slice nicely. It's very subtle, but in a good way and with depth. I like it best on it's own as I find other flavors tend to overpower it. I did move it to the fridge a bit early due to the weather.
Cashew Yogurt: Made this as per the directions in the book, and it came out nice and thick and creamy, but a bit too cashewy for me. I think I'll try decreasing the cashews a bit next time. I used home made soymilk and have a yogurt maker, which made success very easy despite the cool weather.
Hard Gruyere: I let this cook just barely too long after adding the carageenan and it separated on me. Couldn't get it to come back together. I'm not upset though because I'm just going to use it to make some more of the fondue that I loved. I also feel like I learned a lot from the experience. It's really hard to describe that perfect moment to take it off the heat when the carageenan has been cooked enough but before it goes to far and separates out the oil. I think having done it for too long now I'll be able to do it right the next time. Also, I used a double boiler rather than cooking it straight over the heat in hopes of keeping it from burning, but this may have contributed to the problem.
Cashew Chevre: Culturing now, it's taking awhile due to the cool weather. It presently looks too soft, but it may firm up some as it cultures more and then chills in the fridge. Tastes really good, just not quite sharp enough yet. We may end up having it on bagels.

I've tried to make the yoghurt and it turned out too thin and liquidy. I have excellent results using soymilk + coconut cream + cashews. Before I make the yoghurt, I boil the milk mixture for about half an hour and reduce it to a thicker substance... than I proceed as suggested in the book. The yoghurt is super creamy, thick, mildly sweet and delicious :)





Next I made cashew cream cheese frosting (for the carrot cake), it was good but I could taste the cashews too much for my liking and would probably reduce the amount of coconut oil.

Today I made the SanFrancisco cheesecake, it is chilling in the fridge right now. Before I baked it the filling tasted great but as it baked the top cracked all over (not in a cheesecake-like way, it looks more like a dry desert ;). Also 1 hour and 15 minutes on 180°C is definitely too much (yes, I have an oven thermometer), the crust is almost black, next time I'll reduce the temperature and/or baking time.

I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm the only person in the universe who has had the cream cheese fail on them. My apartment is appx. 68-70 degrees and I live in the desert, so the humidity is pretty low.

I put my mixture on the counter top in a clean glass bowl and covered it with another plate. I tasted it after 12 hours just to see... just tasted like blended cashews... then again after 24 and 36 hours... again... just tasted like blended cashews. At 48 hours, though, I went to taste it and it had a mauve-looking mold/bacteria colony growing on it and then another grey-ish colony in another spot. I didn't taste it 'cause I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to be, so that ended up getting chucked. It did look like it had lots of air pockets and bubbles underneath the surface as I was scraping it into the sink, kinda like a bread sponge, so yeah... not sure how things went so very wrong in just a 12 hour period of time.

This!!!

I was starting to think I was the only one too!

I just had my second cream cheese failure. The first time I tried it, my experience was basically the exact same one as yours. Like pink mold, the whole bit. This time, I was scared of that happening again so I was extra super careful, made sure everything it touched was completely disinfected, etc. I was also scared to over-culture it, so I probably did put it in the fridge too early - it still tasted like cashews. But I refrigerated it around the 24 hour mark. After like a day in the fridge, I took it out to show my husband. I opened up the jar, and there it was - more pink mold! what the fizzle? It was in the fridge this time, for forks sake!! I am beginning to think I'm not cut out to be a cheese maker after all :(

I wonder if your yogurt starter wasn't active enough. part of the process is that the helpful cultures out compete and keep the bad bacteria and mold and stuff from growing. the combo of no cultured taste plus flourishing bad stuff makes me think your mix wasn't properly inoculated with the good yogurt cultures. don't know if you need a different brand or just one that's farther from the expiration date or what.

My experience too. Mold before it ever got cheesy.

I used Whole Soy Plain, since it was all the store had. I don't think they carry anything else anymore. I'm pretty sure the sell by date was sometime in March, so I dunno! For the other people with this problem, were you using Whole Soy or another brand?

I guess my other option would be to make my own yogurt, but since I'd have to use that brand as a starter for it (or buy some vegan yogurt starter online)... it might also be a disaster. I'm also not sure that I want to chance wasting $8 worth of cashews again!

whole soy seems to work really well as a yogurt starter for me and i used it in the only successful recipe I've made from this book. Since Silk plain doesn't exist anymore, our options are pretty limited, sadly.