FTC Disclosure: Delicious Obsessions may receive comissions from purchases made through links in this article. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.Read our full terms and conditions here.
Today, I am thrilled to have a guest post by my friend, Starlene Stewart, author of GAPS Diet Journey. Starlene has been chronicling her experience on the GAPS Diet at her blog and is a new member of the Nourished Living Network. For week 13 of my series Bad A** Bacteria, Starlene is here to share her recipe for making cashew nut yogurt. I can’t wait to try this recipe and especially try that cheesecake. It looks amazing!
Thanks for the warm welcome, Jessica. I began looking into yogurt made from milk other than cow or goat milk after I started the Gut and Psychology Syndrome Diet.
Let me point out that GAPS allows and recommends homemade fermented dairy products, and when I started on GAPS we actually had our own small herd of dairy goats specifically for their raw milk, and I regularly made kefir, clabbered milk, yogurt, buttermilk, and soft cheeses.
So why avoid dairy? I had a couple of reasons. For one thing, I was dependent on a steroid inhaler for asthma for the previous nine years following a month long bout with pneumonia. The second reason is that I’d known since 1989 when pregnant with my youngest son, that milk products caused respiratory problems for me. This has not been enough to persuade me to give up milk, but when I started GAPS I figured it was as good a time as any. Some GAPS sources recommend avoiding dairy for a six week period and reintroduce slowly. I thought I could achieve a level of gut healing quickly and reintroduce dairy products so I figured I would get started. I completed the Introduction portion of the GAPS Diet in April 2010 and I am thrilled to report in September 2010 I was able to wean off the steroid inhaler and have been free of asthma and seasonal allergies ever since! However, when I attempt to introduce milk products like yogurt or kefir, I have respiratory symptoms with which I am unwilling to live so I continue to keep milk out of my diet.
The second reason is that I’d known since 1989 when pregnant with my youngest son, that milk products caused respiratory problems for me. This has not been enough to persuade me to give up milk, but when I started GAPS I figured it was as good a time as any. Some GAPS sources recommend avoiding dairy for a six week period and reintroduce slowly. I thought I could achieve a level of gut healing quickly and reintroduce dairy products so I figured I would get started. I completed the Introduction portion of the GAPS Diet in April 2010 and I am thrilled to report in September 2010 I was able to wean off the steroid inhaler and have been free of asthma and seasonal allergies ever since! However, when I attempt to introduce milk products like yogurt or kefir, I have respiratory symptoms with which I am unwilling to live so I continue to keep milk out of my diet.
I completed the Introduction portion of the GAPS Diet in April 2010 and I am thrilled to report in September 2010 I was able to wean off the steroid inhaler and have been free of asthma and seasonal allergies ever since! However, when I attempt to introduce milk products like yogurt or kefir, I have respiratory symptoms with which I am unwilling to live so I continue to keep milk out of my diet.
Hence my search for non-dairy yogurt. I located this product: GI ProHealth non-dairy yogurt starter and learned that you can make yogurt using coconut milk, almond milk or basically any type of nut which is blended into nut “milk”. Here is how I make cashew nut yogurt.
Initially, I tried making cashew nut milk yogurt, but the result was thin and watery. It was delicious but I was looking for a thicker version, like Greek yogurt. I tried dripping, (the process of draining the yogurt using cheesecloth) but there was such a small amount leftover that it seemed a shame to go through all that work for such a small amount of product.
A few weeks ago I came across a recipe for Cashew Cream and I thought this might work great for making a thicker yogurt. In fact, I left a comment on the post stating just that. And now without further adieu, the results of my experimentation.
Cashew Nut Yogurt
Ingredients
- 2 cups raw cashews
- filtered water
- 1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
- 1/3 cup dates, skins removed
- Seeds from one vanilla bean
- 2 teaspoons Bernard Jensen gelatin
- 1/8th teaspoon GI ProHealth non-dairy yogurt starter
Instructions
- Place the cashews in a jar and cover with filtered water. Add a teaspoon of salt and soak overnight.
- The yogurt starter needs a small amount of “sugar” to work and I chose dates, other times I have used honey. My dates were hard so I soaked them overnight as well.
- The next morning drain the water from the cashews and place them in your food processor or blender. Add the 1/3 cup of dates (be sure to remove all the pits), the vanilla bean seeds and one cup of warm filtered water.
- Blend these ingredients. I started out using my food processor but moved to my blender when I realized my trusty old food processor was not powerful enough. I find that the blending process goes smoother with less water so that is why suggest starting out with one cup of water initially.
- Add more water – up to one cup but no more than 2 cups of water total – until the ingredients blend smoothly without having to stop and stir. Here is the smooth and creamy cashew cream.
- When the cashew mixture is smooth, add in water until you have four cups total in your blender. At this point add in two teaspoons of Jensen’s gelatin and hit the blender a couple of times to mix well.
- Remove one tablespoon of the cashew mixture and stir the 1/8th teaspoon yogurt starter in until it is well mixed. It tends to clump up a bit so just mash with the back of a spoon and stir until it is smooth. Now add back into the cashew cream and mix well.
- Move into your yogurt maker. I find that mine holds a 32-ounce jar nicely.
- Turn it on and leave for seven hours.
- When it is done it will be creamy and delicious.
- After I made the yogurt, I wasn’t quite done with my master plans. I had decided to make Blueberry Cheesecake using this nut yogurt. I invite you to come over to my blog for the recipe.
Thanks again, Jessica, for this opportunity to guest blog at Delicious Obsessions and take part in your Bad A** Bacteria series!
About the Recipe Author: Starlene is the creator and author of GAPS Diet Journey, where she chronicles her journey to health on the GAPS Diet and explores other healing modalities compatible with GAPS . She also has a Blog Talk Radio show where she shares the testimonials for adults and children who are healing on the GAPS Diet. Starlene is married with two adult sons who were unschooled. The Stewart family lives in rural Arizona on a small hobby farm where they have raised steer, turkeys, pigs, lambs, chickens, ducks, dairy goats and guinea hens over the years, although currently they are down to chickens, one duck, several dogs and two cats. She is one of the newest members of the Nourished Living Network and is excited to share her knowledge with her fellow bloggers and readers. You can keep up with her through her blog, or connect with Starlene on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.
Delicious Obsessions is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.Read our full terms and conditions here.
Thanks for letting me guest host today, Jessica! If you get to try the cashew nut yogurt I would love to hear what you think of it. 🙂
My daughter does not tolerate dates, or any fruit sugars. Can they be left out? Also, do you know if these bacteria strands contain FOS’s?
Thanks!
Hi Renee, this yogurt starter is SCD legal, according to this page: http://www.giprohealth.com/giprostart.aspx and it does specifically state that it is hypoallergenic with no FOS: “Avoidance of ingredients such as maltodextrin (derived from corn, wheat or rice), chicory root-based inulin oligosaccharides, anhydrose dextrose (corn derived), no fructooligosaccharides (FOS), and/or starches for those following dietary programs requiring their avoidance.”
Number 7 under Helpful Hints on this page http://www.giprohealth.com/makingyogurt-2.aspx says, “Most alternative milks require 1 to 2 tablespoons of honey per quart of milk to the mixture. This gives the starter cultures an environment to reproduce.”
So you can leave the dates out, using honey instead. But don’t use 1/3 cup honey, just 1 to 2 tablespoons. I probably could have gotten by using much less dates. I have made coconut milk yogurt using honey but I wanted to try something different this time so went with the dates to provide the bacteria something to eat.
Thanks for your questions, and I hope your daughter will be able to try it. Best, Starlene
do you think it would work to make this type on the counter or in the crockpot if you don’t have a yogurt maker?
I think that crock pots work well for yogurt if you keep it on the warm setting. Let me double check with Starlene though and I’ll let you know! 🙂
Hi Tutti, I have not tried making yogurt in the crockpot. If you have experience with using a crockpot to make regular milk yogurt, I would go ahead and try it with the cashew nut yogurt. I looked up some crockpot yogurt recipes and most of them said to allow the crockpot to heat the milk to 180°F and once it cools down to the correct temp, add the starter and put a towel on the crockpot to hold in the warmth. So it might work, but remember nut milk takes less time than regular milk. I hope that helps! Thanks Jessica for letting me know there was a question. 🙂
SO glad this worked out for you! I have never made my own yogurt before, but I’m really happy that my Cashew Cream inspired it! Thanks for linking to my post. 🙂
What is it exactly that the yoghurt maker does? I don’t have one and I am wondering if there is a way of making yoghurt without it. I live in mexico, and the weather is super hot here. Is it meant to be kept at a relatively high temperature while it matures for 7 hours?
Thanks
Hi Stacey – The yogurt makers help keep the yogurt at the right temperature so it cultures. That said, I don’t have a yogurt maker and have developed an amazingly delicious coconut milk yogurt that you can make just using your oven! Get that recipe here: https://www.deliciousobsessions.com/2013/04/how-to-make-creamy-coconut-milk-yogurt-no-yogurt-maker-required/
I grew up on yogurt and we lived in Turkey and Egypt, pretty close to Mexico’s latitude. My Mom made yogurt by warming ceramic pots near the stove while she was heating the milk, cooling it, culturing a bit of it, and adding the cultured milk back to the batch. Then she put the warm cultured milk in the pots, stacked them in a dark corner of the sun room, and covered the top one with a heavy lid. Her yogurt was always delicious, but she couldn’t make it in winter, because the room didn’t stay warm enough.
Hi Isington! Thank you for stopping by and sharing!
I just put this in my yogurt maker so i have yet to know how this turns out but i did have a quick question: every other recipe I see for making yogurt (plant based or otherwise) seems to call for heating the milk up to about 180 then cooling it to 110 before adding the yogurt cultures why is that? Does it not have to be heated since it is more of a cashew cream as opposed to a cashew milk?
Hi Katie! Thanks for stopping by! The main purpose for heating your dairy milk before making yogurt is because it makes the milk proteins easier to digest for the good bacteria doing the fermenting. This helps improve the texture of the final product. Since this is a non-dairy milk with no dairy proteins the step is not needed. Hope that helps! Let me know how it turns out in your yogurt maker!