Interestingly enough, this vegan sunflower seed cheese recipe is a sample recipe from Almond Essence by Janet L. Doane. Janet uses almond milk in the original recipe, but gives water as an option to keep it completely nut-free. And here are her notes on this recipe:
We use sunflower seed cheese in any recipe that normally would call for sour cream, cheese, or yoghurt. It has found its way to roasted veggies, salads, soups, crackers, fruits, green chilies, and much more. Sprouted seed cheese is an enzyme-rich food that will last 2 – 3 days, covered, in the refrigerator. Sometimes the cheese becomes a bit grey from oxidation, but this doesn’t seem to affect the taste. The lemon juice usually keeps the cheese white and bright. Leaving the skins on the sunflower seeds makes the seed cheese greyer. Taking them off makes the cheese whiter and smoother.
Special Diet Notes: Sprouted Sunflower Almond Cheese
By ingredients, this recipe is dairy-free / non-dairy, egg-free, gluten-free, optionally nut-free, peanut-free, soy-free, vegan, vegetarian, paleo, and perhaps even keto-friendly.
- 1 cup sunflower seeds, soaked for 4 to 8 hours
- ¼ cup plain unsweetened almond milk beverage or water, plus additional as needed
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon ume plum vinegar (or 1 to 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar + ¼ teaspoon sea salt)
- 1 small garlic clove, minced
- Before draining the sunflower seeds, rub them between your fingers to help release most of the skins. They affect the color, and the texture just a little, but not the taste. So it's okay if you don't get them all. Drain off the skins and water.
- Place the seeds in your blender or food processor with the almond milk or water, lemon juice, vinegar, and garlic. Blend, adding more liquid if it is too thick, until the mixture is as smooth as possible. Stop and scrape down the sides as needed.
- Serve immediately, and store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
More Dairy-Free Cheese Alternative Recipes
Fresh Herb Seed Cheese
Basic Dairy-Free Parmesan
Meltable Muenster
4 Comments
Hi is there a substitute for the vinegar? Can you just use more lemon juice?
It would be a bit more like lemon seed butter. In my own seed cheese recipe, I use salt, miso, and nutritional yeast with the lemon juice, rather than vinegar.
Can one leave out the garlic ? Or is there a substitute ?
Also can soymilk be suvstituted as well for almond milk ?
Thank you.
You can definitely substitute soy milk. You can omit the garlic, but keep in mind that sunflower seeds have a rather pronounced flavor. The garlic helps to balance that out. You might opt to add another ingredient or two for flavor balance. You can taste test as you. Even adding some salt might achieve that for you.