How to Make a Vegan Cheese Board | AD

How to Make a Vegan Cheese Board | AD

Vegan food is full of exciting and interesting flavours but sometimes there are a few things that vegans miss from their previous diet. Cheese is a common food mentioned when asked about this. After having been a vegetarian for years, I started eating a vegan diet when I was a teenager and cheese was the one thing I missed too – I found that there were lots of vegan options for everything else. That was nearly 20 years ago now and it’s so much easier being vegan today with lots of different vegan products easily available in regular supermarkets and lots of brilliant vegan recipes to explore online.

The vegan cheese market has changed too. Back in the day, I would have said that there’s no way that you can make a vegan cheese board – I only remember there being a vegan cream cheese and one brand of melty burger style cheese slices available then. Now there’s lots of choice for vegan cheese too and the flavours and textures are much more advanced and so much more like the real thing. 

In this article, I will show you my vegan cheese board that I made using a range of vegan cheese types from Violife that makes a broad range of 100% vegan cheese, cream, butter and spread alternatives. 

To make a vegan cheese board, you naturally need some vegan cheese! Use your own favourites, of course. Here you can see Violife Epic Mature Cheddar Block which is crumbly and has a great cheddar style taste, Violife Original Flavour Slices which are versatile and have a classic cheese flavour, Violife Smoky Cheddar Flavour Slices which are bursting with flavour and have a hickory smoky rind, Violife Le Rond Camembert Flavour which is soft, round and creamy and can be baked, and Violife Original Flavour Grated that can be used to top a variety of foods such as pizzas and pasta dishes.

I used all of the above except for the grated option on my vegan cheese board. If I’d had some baguette or other fresh bread available, I would have made some cheesy garlic bread using Violife Original Flavour Grated. I will do that next time as I’m sure that would work really well!

Once you’ve chosen your vegan cheeses, it’s time to build the board and fill the gaps with different crackers, fruit and vegetables and vegan snacks. There are no rules here, you can use whatever you like but it’s a good idea to have some different flavours that work well with the different types of cheeses. Some sweet things, some savoury things, some variations in textures etc to keep things interesting and balanced. 

I opted for red pepper, cucumber, tomatoes, basil, carrot batons, slices of apple, caramelised onion hummus drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, apricot jam as a topping for the vegan camembert, ready salted crisps, nuts, Swedish crispbreads, cream crackers and breadsticks. Other great items to add would be olives, gherkins or other pickled vegetables and some fresh bread.

This was such a great cheese board full of flavours! Great to share with a loved one for a tasty lunch or in the evening with a glass of your favourite vegan red wine. My favourites out of the Violife vegan cheeses are the Smoky Cheddar Flavour Slices and the Epic Mature Cheddar Block – I think Violife has done a brilliant job recreating the flavours of these two especially. 

A note about vegan cheese:

When you’re new to vegan cheese, it will most likely take you a little while to get used to the flavours if you have recently eaten dairy cheese. It can be a bit of a transition for some. Your taste in food changes when you make changes to your diet too.

Collaboration.