Many vegans miss their favourites that used cheese as a main or integral ingredient. But this vegan cauliflower cheese bake will fill that craving perfectly – and more. It’s got more of everything – veggies, etc, but no cruelty, no cholesterol, and a much smaller environmental footprint. What’s not to like about it.
If you’ve been busy cooking in bulk, you’ll hopefully already have some cheese sauce in the freezer that you can just get out for this dish. If not, maybe make a batch, use some for this dish, and freeze the rest. That way you have some ready for the next time you need a cheese sauce.
The veggies I like to use are peppers, chillies, red onions, mushrooms, courgettes or even aubergines, plus baby plum tomatoes. Not necessarily all at once, but you can mix it about a bit each time you make it. I find using the actifry to batch cook the veggies is the most effective way, but if you don’t have one, a wok will do.
Steaming the cauliflower for around 10 minutes first makes sure that it’s nice and tender when it’s been cooked in the oven. It also makes sure the sauce doesn’t burn on top in order to cook the cauliflower fully.
Once you have all the veg prepared, and the sauce ready, it’s just a question of combining it all in an oven proof dish. Then grating some extra cheese and maybe breadcrumbs with some herbs and spices and putting it in the oven to brown and finish cooking.
This vegan cauliflower cheese bake goes very well with hummus and garlic bread. I also like to have it with steamed spiced cabbage or any other green vegetable.
Cauliflower Cheese Bake
Equipment
- 20 by 30cm pyrex dish
- cheeese grater
- medium saucepan
- Tefal Actifry - not essential, but speeds this up considerably
Ingredients
- 760 g that's two packs of my special cheese sauce - see sauces for the recipe to make it in bulk and freeze.
- 100 ml Some extra unsweetened soya milk if needed to thin the sauce a little
- 50 g Olive oil cold pressed
- 200 g chestnut mushrooms
- 200 g g/1 large red pepper
- 190 g g/1 medium courgette
- 200 g g/1 small aubergine optional
- 300 g g/One pack of baby plum tomatoes
- 220 g g/One large red onion diced into 1cm pieces
- 30 g One bulb garlic
- 2 heads medium cauliflower heads
- 50 g Red pesto Sacla vegan – optional
- 150 g Tofu Weiner sausages by 2 - optional optional
- 30 g chopped corriander optional
Instructions
- Defrost or make 2 portions of vegan cheese sauce
getting the cauliflower ready
- Break cauliflower into reasonably large florets.
- Steam for 8 minutes and set aside
making the extra veg for bottom layer
- Cut peppers and courgettes into short strips – don’t dice
- Cut mushrooms into fairly thick slices
- Halve baby plum tomatoes
- Add 10g of oil to Actifry and add in the diced red onion (plus aubergine if using plus extra 10g oil) – set actifry to 5 minutes
- Then add in the pepper and courgettes and give it another 5 minutes
- Add in the crushed garlic and give it another 5 minutes.
- Set aside the onions, peppers and courgettes into a bowl.
- Add the mushrooms and tomatoes into the now empty Actifry with 15g of oil and give it 10 minutes or so.
- You can add in some herbs – like oregano or herb provencale.
constructing the dish
- Mix all veg together (apart from cauliflower) and add in the pesto (if using) and mix.
- Place in bottom of pyrex dish (give size here)
- Place cauliflower florets on top.
- Pour cheese sauce over – may need to add extra soya milk to get a nice pouring constituency – mustn’t be too thick.
- Sprinkle Scheeze mozzarella and great the Cheesely mozzarella on top.
- Sprinkle on some oregano, and paprika.
- Bake in oven on 170°C for 25 -30 minutes or so until cheese is nicely browned and dish is bubbling and hot.
