Easy Dairy-Free Veggie Cream Cheese

This easy vegan cream cheese recipe has had me happy dancing around the kitchen every morning this week! Dairy free veggie cream cheese requires zero cashews, is bursting with flavor, has a soft creamy tofu based texture you have to taste to believe, and requires very minimal effort on your part. Roll up your sleeves and pour yourself a strong cup of coffee, my friend. We’re making vegan cream cheese!


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One day over holiday break, fueled by a healthy amount of good champagne and vegan cheeseball leftovers, it occurred to me that we could easily adapt our tofu cheeseball recipe to make cream cheese. Or, more specifically, veggie cream cheese with an epic flavor and luxurious texture that just begs to be generously smeared over allllll the bagels. Mmmm, bagels.

I was pretty certain this was a genius idea, and when I told T, he emphatically agreed.

Now, I feel I should probably note: I love the wide variety of vegan cream cheese options we have in our local grocery stores these days. But when you love cream cheese as much as I do, it’s pretty exciting to know you can make a kickass version right at home that’s 4xs the size and a fraction of the price. It makes me feel all empowered and excited to be alive.

As you can see, I had high expectations. 🙂

I’m happy to say the recipe we’re sharing with you today totally lives up to the hype in my head. It has totally transformed my breakfast time and sandwich time and really, any-time-I-want-a-snack time. And I’m confident it can do the same for you.

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This easy vegan cream cheese recipe has had me up and dancing for joy around the kitchen every morning this week! It's bursting with flavor, has a soft creamy texture you have to taste to believe, and requires very minimal effort on your part. #vegan #tofu #coconutoil #dairyfree // plantpowercouple.com

How to Make Vegan Cream Cheese

So, let’s talk about how easy it is to make this vegan cream cheese: You’ll start by blending up some tofu with refined coconut oil, lemon juice, sea salt, and water.

After a few minutes on medium-high, the oil will start to emulsify, resulting in a creamy beauuutiful texture. This part is key. I actually had a few test versions that I didn’t let emulsify fully, and they were…not great. So, practice patience with this step and stop to scrape the sides as needed.

Two side by side photos of the first two steps of making vegan cream cheese. Add the tofu coconut oil, lemon juice, and sea salt to a high powered blender or food processor and blend until smooth and creamy and shiny.

Next, you’ll stir in one of those dry veggie soup mix packets. Many of the brands we find at our local grocery store are vegan, but a few have some weird add-ins like chicken fat (seriously…whyyy *shakes fist in air*), so be sure to read ingredients here. I got the soup mix tip from T; it’s always been his favorite easy way to liven up cream cheese!

Two photos of the last two steps of making vegan cream cheese: Pour the mixture into a bowl and whisk in the dry veggie soup mix.

Once the soup mix is well-incorporated, you’ll let it set in the fridge overnight. This allows the coconut oil to solidify, giving this vegan cream cheese the purrrfect spread-able texture. When you wake, it will be almost as exciting as Christmas morning felt when you were a kid. At least, that’s how it felt for me.

This easy vegan cream cheese recipe has had me up and dancing for joy around the kitchen every morning this week! It's bursting with flavor, has a soft creamy texture you have to taste to believe, and requires very minimal effort on your part. #vegan #tofu #coconutoil #dairyfree // plantpowercouple.com

More Tofu Cheese Recipes:

We totally hope you give this vegan cream cheese recipe a try! It would be such a great idea to add to your weekly meal prep if you’re into that sorta thing. Make one big batch that you can throw on bagels, toast, sandwiches, pinwheels, whatever all week long!

And when you do make this recipe, we’d really love to hear about it! In case you haven’t noticed, that’s kind of our favorite thing. 🙂 You can rate the recipe and leave a comment below or tag us in your awesome photos on Instagram. If you’re not already following along, we’re @theplantpowercouple with the “the”.

Until next time, friends. Enjoy!

This easy vegan cream cheese recipe has had me up and dancing for joy around the kitchen every morning this week! It's bursting with flavor, has a soft creamy texture you have to taste to believe, and requires very minimal effort on your part. #vegan #tofu #coconutoil #dairyfree // plantpowercouple.com

Easy Dairy-Free Veggie Cream Cheese

Brittany Roche
This easy vegan cream cheese recipe has had me happy-dancing around the kitchen every morning! It's bursting with flavor, has a soft creamy texture you have to taste to believe, and requires very minimal effort on your part.
5 from 4 votes
Prep Time 8 hours 15 minutes
Total Time 8 hours 15 minutes

Ingredients
  

Instructions
 

  • Open the tofu package and use your hands to crumble it into the blender or food processor. Add the oil, lemon juice, water, and salt. Cover and blend until the oil emulsifies and the mixture is smooth and creamy. This part is key, so be patient. It can take several minutes for the mixture to go from grainy to smooth. Stop to scrape the sides as needed and use a tamper if you have one.
  • Pour the mixture into a large air-tight container and stir in the soup mix. Once incorporated, cover the container and place it in the fridge for 8 hours or overnight to set.
  • When the mixture has set, taste and adjust seasonings as you see fit. Then, spread it on bagels, toast, sandwiches, ALL. THE. THINGS. You can store leftovers in the fridge for a week or the freezer for a month.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
This easy vegan cream cheese recipe has had me up and dancing for joy around the kitchen every morning this week! It's bursting with flavor, has a soft creamy texture you have to taste to believe, and requires very minimal effort on your part. #vegan #tofu #coconutoil #dairyfree // plantpowercouple.com

Watch our Creamy Vegan Vegetable Spread web story.

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14 Comments

  1. Would this work (set up?) without the dry veggie soup mix Am thinking of using this for recipes I have that call for cream cheese that I want to make vegan and am concerned that the soup mix might be needed to absorb extra moisture in order to set up properly.
    1. Hi, Dawn. It should, but you might need to add just a little onion/garlic powder to sub for the seasoning mix to adjust for moisture/liquid content as you stated. I'd suggest seeing how it sets without, then you can add the onion/garlic if you feel it needs it. Hope this helps!
  2. Do you like fish flavor? If you do, maybe you could add algal oil (from source-omega or from jedward''s international) to make a vegan lox?

    5 stars

    1. That's an interesting take, Bet! I'll have to try my hand at this a little to see what I can come up with. I'm glad you liked the recipe, and thanks for the tip! Hope you have a great day!
  3. Thank you guys so much for sharing this recipe and your emulsion secrets!! I made this with only 1/4C oil and 1 tbsp water. Had to really work the plunging guy in the vitamix for a few minutes but it worked! I had tried a tofu cream cheese before that had a ton of nutritional yeast and didn't specify to blend to be shiny... and it was disgusting in taste and texture.

    5 stars

    1. Thanks, Julia!! Yeah, during the trial and error phase we had some grainy results as well. That's why we wanted to be sure to share all those tips to get the creamiest results. I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Thanks again!
  4. I was wondering what soup mix brand you recommend or that you guys used in the recipe? Thank you
    1. Hi, Kelley. I think it was the "Lipton Kosher" veg soup mix. Some brands contain dairy and some of them actually contain chicken fat!! Your best bet is to ensure you are reading the ingredients. Knorr might be clean of animal products as well, but honestly, I can't remember which brand we used.

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