Vegan Flax Milk cheese... and I made it!

So I recently snagged one of the sought after cheese makers from this Canadian company. I have begun an experiment of making cheese. I will share as I go through each one, and let you know how it goes. We've been on a fermentation vibe lately. I grabbed this awesome cabbage and we've got our New Year's sauerkraut started as well. This baby from a local farm was 14.5 pounds! She was glad to put it down.


So then I decided to make my cheese, and experiment number one is completed.

Recipe is 4 cups, 2 tbsp, 1/2 tsp and 2 tbsp of each in order below... followed by a large four tbsp of potato starch. WOWZERS.

Flax milk + lemon juice + salt + seasoning .... and then + potato starch + love = cheese!!!


I used the Good Karma Foods flax milk, and I seasoned this one with garlic and rosemary. Very soft, took thirty-six hours rather than the two hours they say you need for regular whole milk cheese. The reason I decided to add potato starch at the last-minute before bed to solidify is that most vegan cheeses that I look at have potato starch in them. That is what really brought it to to this stand alone texture rather than just being a spread over the last 12 hours.

My working theory is that the fats aren't enough, and that cheese requires carbohydrates. So I decided that I would make a carbohydrate rich coconut milk cheese next. Turns out that coconut milk does not create curds... at all. But hey, it does make the best non-dairy coffee creamer, so win win. I did everything the same, and when I added the lemon it almost foamed out of the bowl. Note to self that coconut milk and acid actually equals a volcano.


One another note regular whole milk dairy gets cooked for twelve to fourteen minutes. I have found so far that vegan beverages will boil over after about 8 or 9 minutes max.

That moves on to experiment three, which I decided to try to make cheese for my daughter from goat milk kefir. My husband says that kefir is already fermented and cannot be made into cheese. But it is my understanding that you can make a sort of mizithra style cheese with kefir. So that is what I am working on now, a guacamole seasoned goat cheese, while I try to determine what I want to try next. I am thinking that I want to try to make a milk from maybe tigernuts, and try to make that into a cheese. I have seen recipes for almond milk cheese, and nut cheese seems to be the vegan choice. Tigernuts as a tuber are going to have the some carbohydrates. The Kite Hill ricotta is just almond milk (Water, Almonds), salt, enzymes, tartaric Acid, and cultures. So tigernuts may be the way to go.

I also want to try to make my own flax milk and try that because I don't know if it was the peas or the flax that made curds in the cheese I was able to make with experiment one.

The cheese experiments continue...