CHEESY POTATO CAKES

I love cheese. Cheese in all its forms: creamy cheese, savory cheese, herb cheese and even better: mèlted cheese. Cheese was truly my addiction and therefore the hardest thing to give up when I adopted a plant based diet. Until I discovered that you can veganize really ANY kind of cheese... Now I make the most delicious cheesy dishes with just a few ingredients! The only difference? I don't feel gross afterwards, my pants doesn't feel tighter and tighter after every copious cheesy meal, no heavy stomach or constipation, no more guilt and the scale shoots down instead of going up!

I used to have to do portion control in order to avoid getting fat. Now, I can eat as much of my 'cheesy meals' and I don't need to worry about my belly 'starting to hang over my pants'! I lòve it!

These cakes are like Gratin Dauphinois but in cupcake form. But you can choose to make them in an oven dish. It will taste just as good. I usually make a big batch of this which I freeze en reheat in the microwave whenever I'm busy and don't have time to cook. That's how easy plant based living is! Time after time, I'm amazed at how good this recipe is to lose weight! You can steam some broccoli with this or you could eat the cupcakes with some spinach. To be honest, you can eat whatever you want with it, the recipe goes well with almost any vegetable.

What will you need?
For the cheese layer:

510 g cooked sweet potato
207 g roasted bell pepper from a jar
142 g nutritional yeast (where to buy nutritional yeast)
32 g salt
a pinch of pepper
6 g onion powder
5 g garlic powder
59 g liquid smoke (where to buy liquid smoke)
28 g smoked paprika powder (where to buy smoked paprika powder)
16 g agar agar powder (where to buy agar agar powder)
105 g water (you'll add this into your blender in order to be able to blend everything smoothly)

Other ingredients:

4 big white potatoes
2 fresh onions

This is how you make it:

peel the potatoes and cook them whole (don't cut them into pieces) but make sure there's still a crunch to them. They should still be firm they're done. When the potatoes are done, throw them in a strainer and let them cool.
lay the sweet potatoes onto a plate and let them cook in the microwave until they're done (when you put a fork in them, the fork should slide through the potato like a knife would slide through butter). Take them out of the microwave and let them cool.
when the sweet potatoes have cooled down, you can peel them.
peel the onions and shred them.
throw all of the ingredients for the cheese layer, except the agar agar powder, into your food processor and mix everything until there are no more clots in the mixture.
dice the white potatoes into thick slices.
in a small pot, bring a bottom of water to a boil. When the water starts to boil, put the stove on low and add the agar agar powder while stiring. Keep stiring until the powder has completely disolved and starts to bind with the water. You should get a think glue-like consistency. Now add the 'glew' to your food processor with the rest of the mixed ingredients and blend again until the glew is well incorporated into the mixture.
now start to make layers in silicone muffin forms or in a baking tray of your choice. You could also use a round quiche form. If you don't use silicone forms, make sure to put some baking paper on the bottom. Start with a layer of potato slices, then some shredded onion and then a layer of 'cheese'. Repeat the process until your muffin forms or baking tray are completely full and make sure to end with a layer of 'cheese'.
put the baking forms in a preheated oven and let them bake for another 15 minutes at 200 °C or 392 °F. After 15 minutes, take them out and let them cool. When they're cooled, you'll notice that the 'cheese' isn't as runny anymore and you can just 'pop' the muffins out of the forms. You can now reheat them in the microwave and eat them. If you like to eat them straight out of the oven, you can just add more agar agar powder to your mixture. The more agar agar powder you use, the stiffer your mixture will be when it just comes out of the oven. If you're just food prepping and want to eat the meals later that week, you don't even have to put the cakes in the oven. You can then just make layers in microwave-proof containers and put those in the fridge until you want to reheat them.

You can probably tell from this recipe that I always use a food processor to mix my ingredients, even when I could easily mix them with my hands in a mixing bowl. Contrary to what many people think, you don't need any special or expensive kitchen aids to adopt a plant based lifestyle, but there is one kitchen tool I do find indispensable and that's a food processor. It does way more for me than just blend or grind my ingredients. What I find even more important, is that you can make the healthiest but most delicious ice creams with it in many different flavours! You'll find the recipes to those on my blog soon! They're so healthy and good for weight loss that I eat them for breakfast every day. It may not be the most conventional American breakfast, but I can assure you that it's incredibly filling yet easy to digest and above all: it's incredibly refreshing and rehydrating which makes waking up with this recipe so much more pleasant. When I eat banana ice cream for breakfast, I feel so revitalized that I don't even need a cup of coffee afterwards to feel awake. I do usually drink one though, just as a morning ritual and to relax before the busy day starts.

You don't have to buy a super powerful, expensive food processor to be able to make these ice creams though. Here are some examples of affordable food processors that are powerful enough (click on the images to see more details):