Have you ever had the Saint-Graal at Crudessence? Looking at the menu, you’d think, “why would I pay to have something so simple in a restaurant. I can make that!” It’s a little pricey, but it’s so good. It’s basically a raw granola, cashew yogurt and fruit parfait.
I can make yummy (non-raw) granola, but it’s the cashew yogurt that eludes me. So, since I had rejuvelac leftover from the cheese experiment, I decided to give yogurt a go.
It’s not easy finding a recipe, so I settled on the one on this page. I dutifully soaked the cashews for 8 hours, then drained them. Then I food-processed them with the rejuvelac. All was fine up until that point, but for some reason I thought I had to strain the pulp from the liquid. And I only realized this the day after I let it ferment in a light-bulb-warmed oven. Grr.
So while it bubbled, it stayed fairly fluid. And the cheesy smell, as expected, was very present — even after I mixed in the skinned/pitted dates and vanilla extract. What to do? To reverse this fail, I added blueberry preserves to mask cheesy smell and improve the taste, though it wasn’t what I call sweet. I left it to chill in the fridge with my fingers crossed.
This morning I decided I’d try a bit of the yogurt with some store-bought cereal — a box of Nature’s Path Pomegranate & Cherry that’s all granola and virtually no fruit, by the way. I find this cereal is pretty sweet on its own and this actually paired well with the blueberry cashew yogurt. Fail (narrowly) averted!
If I had to do it again, here’s what I’d do differently:
- Not use 100% rejuvelac. Obviously it’s a major factor in the cheesy smell, but maybe other grains wouldn’t produce such an odor. I’d probably halve it and fill out the rest with filtered water. It shouldn’t affect the fermentation process in the last step.
- Definitely not strain. If the mixture is too thick more need liquid is needed. So either rejuvelac or water, being careful not to add too much.
So while it’s nothing like the cashew yogurt at Crudessence, which was mild but slightly tangy-sweet, the recipe I tried definitely needs to be modified for my tastes.
By the way, this is the last of my recent raw cashew craze. I will only use the remaining cashews in my possession for kale pesto — I promise!