Melting Mozzarella Cheese!

I did it! YAY!

You will need:

290G Silken tofu - drained
¼ cup of raw (roasted will work, but not preferable) UNSALTED cashews
¼ cup of water
1 tablespoon of Garlic powder
1 tablespoon of Nutritional yeast
½ tablespoon of American Mustard
½ tablespoon of Lemon juice – fresh or bottled
½ - 1 tablespoon of sea salt
3 Tablespoons of Agar-Agar Powder

Place cashews and water in blender/food processer and blend on high for 5 minutes until thickened cream consistency – Most recipes require you to soak overnight (for a cashew cream), but it works fine if you do it straight away
add all other ingredients minus the agar-agar powder and blend for a further 5 minutes until well combined, I would suggest scraping down the sides whilst this is blending to make sure everything is well combined.
Gently fold agar powder into the mixture and blend for a minute until mixed.

In the pot (before cooking), it should look similar to this

Place ‘cheese’ mixture into a pan on medium-high heat and gently fold until cooked through.
It is important that this step is done correctly; otherwise your cheese will not set properly.
The easiest way to tell that it is cooked properly is the mixture will be thickening (a lot)
Once this is happening immediately transfer into a mould (I just used a small take away container) – I would suggest having this ready before you start cooking cheese, it will start to set immediately once off the heat! – smooth down the top of the mixture evenly and place in the fridge to set for a few hours.

Vegetemite and grilled cheese on toast! 

The cheese is much alike the consistency of cheezly, which is quite soft. If you would prefer to grate a harder cheese, I would suggest throwing it in the freezer half an hour or so before you are going to grate it.

I will definitely play around with this recipe more to make a cheddar version. The reason this cheese melts is the agar. At room temperature your cheese block will be very 'gel-like' as agar is a seaweed gelatin, but melts at 85°C.
Bear in mind it will not melt like dairy cheese does, but it's a lot cheaper than buying vegan cheese at a specialty store, or great to make if you're unlucky enough to not live anywhere near a shop which sells it.

Don't be too alarmed by the price of agar agar powder, mine cost about $17.50 for 65 grams of it.
To put it in perspective...
1kg of vegan cheese can be anything over $30
2 batches of the above recipe makes roughly 1kg... and would only require 6 tablespoons of agar. You could make over 5 kilos with the powder = money saving!