Vegan Cheesecake Cookie Bars
- 2 mins
This cheesecake has a smooth, creamy texture without any dairy. It's lighter than traditional cheesecake and sort of reminds me of a light, fluffy pudding or flan texture. The chocolate chips and cookie dough chunks add a nice variety of heterogeneous flavors and textures.
I recently felt compelled to make cheesecake and I've also been meaning to try out some vegan recipies. This recipe is featured on the cover of Holly Jade's "The Essential Book of Vegan Bakes" which makes them look fantastic plus "cheesecake cookie dough" is an irresistable combination of words.
The recipe was pretty straightforward. Or it might've been very straightforward if I didn't choose to make my own chashew based "cream" and "butter" according to Miyoko Schinner's "glorious butterless butter" and "cashew cream" recipies from "The Homemade Vegan Pantry." I think this might be a case where store bought vegan butter and cream substitutes could've tasted better than homemade, but the draw to vegan baking for me is the simplicity and purity of ingredients which is why I made them myself. Although, I did have to buy plant based cream cheese since that would've been a bit more involved to make myself than I was willing to do right now.
For my first foray into vegan baking, I'm quite pleased with how these turned out but I'm still interested to experiment more. I think vegan and vegetarian foods are best when they're not trying to be something they're not (I'll take some rice and daal over a meat substitute or even a black bean patty any day of the week), so I'm on the lookout for recipes that aren't just common recipies with dairy ingredients substituted for the closest vegan equivalent. I think commparing vegan food to non-vegan food often does the vegan food a disservice. This recipe isn't quite cheesecake and by expecting it to be like cheesecake you could set yourself up for disappointment when it doesn't meet expectations of traditional cheesecake. Not that the recipe is bad, it's quite good, but it's not cheesecake.