Smoked black sesame cream cheese

Recently I took part in a 14 days photo challenge. I always feel that there is so much for me to learn, so I could present my foods better for you.

Our second task was lowkey lights and cheese. I started thinking about it, how on earth will I take a picture of a piece of cheese, as I don't eat cheese. I had a piece of a vegan version sitting sadly in my fridge, but there is no texture, no holes in it, just a plain yellow piece of food, which is oh so not photographic at all. I tried biting in it, grating it and made a somewhat descent picture. But as time went by my mind couldn't stop thinking how I could come up with something better than this.

Lowkey is usually a pretty dark picture in focus with something you want to show. So I thought how cool would it be to have a black cheese! I'm already in love with black food, using activated charcoal in lattes or desserts, black tomatoes, purple basil which is almost look like black.

Next thought was that vegan cheese is usually made from nuts. So what could be black enough? I can't just burn some almonds to black because that would be dry and taste like shit. Looked in my pantry and there it was! Black sesame seeds. What else to put in there to make it creamy and more flavourful? So I began to just mix mix mix and finally it came out good. Tried to cool it in a form so I could cut it, but didn't succeed so I agreed it to be a cream cheese.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup black sesame seeds

1/8 cup nutritional yeast

1 tsp salt

1 block smoked tofu

chilli flakes

basil

Pour sesame seeds, nutritional yeast and salt in a blender and blend them until fine powder consistency. After that add the tofu, chilli, basil and blend all together. And it's ready, really as simple as it seems.

For a soy-free version which can be cut into pieces. You can mix 1 cup plant based milk or water with 2 tbsp agar-agar, simmer for 5 minutes and add it to your blended mixture. Pour it in a from and let it sit in the fridge until firm.

If you wan't your cheese to be a bit darker in colour (e.g. for Halloween you need a spooky one) you can alway add a teaspoon of activated charcoal.

Hope you enjoyed this recipe and will make it at home. If yes, don't forget to tag me or send me your creations, I'm always glad to see them :)

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