Nothing tastes better on a bagel than cream cheese. The vegan alternatives on the market taste horrible (in my opinion) and are loaded with ingredients that I can’t buy in my grocery store- and what are natural vegan flavors anyway?
Here is the ingredient list for Daiya’s cream cheese: Filtered water, coconut oil, tapioca starch, non-GMO expeller pressed canola and/or non-GMO expeller pressed safflower oil, potato starch, pea protein isolate, sea salt, vegetable glycerin, xanthan gum, lactic acid (for flavor), agave syrup, natural vegan flavors, titanium dioxide (a naturally occurring mineral), vegan enzyme, cultured sugar.
My cream cheese is 3 ingredients. Yep, just 3 ingredients and then you can turn it into anything you want. I turned my most recent batch into a super garlicy spread.
You will need a high speed blender and a glass container to put the cream cheese in.
2 cups of raw cashews (soaked for 24 hours)
¼ tsp sea salt
2 heaping tbsp of plain coconut yogurt (or a capsule of good quality probiotics)
Drain water from cashews and put into blender. Blend until completely smooth. Then add salt and yogurt or probiotics and blend just to incorporate.
Put cream cheese into a glass container with a lid (I used a pyrex container that has a loose fitting glass lid). Put on counter and let sit for 24 hours. After 24 hours it should have the taste of cream cheese- you may need to adjust salt to bring out more of the flavor.
For my super Garlicky cream cheese I roasted 6 whole heads of garlic. I let them cool and mashed them. It is super messy to do this so next time I will get a container of pre-peeled garlic cloves and roast those. I added all of this mashed roasted garlic to the cream cheese as well as 1 to 2 tbsps of fresh diced garlic. Salt and Pepper to taste.
If you don’t like garlic you could do a fresh herb one, or make cream cheese frosting with it. To save some calories and carbs- if you like you can cut the bagel into 4 slices instead of 2.