The vegan blue cheese drizzle for Virtuous Pie‘s Stranger Wings pizza has become our favourite salad dressing, so I make it at least once a week, and we have it on everything. It’s from a recipe in The Plant-Based Foodie Cookbook, and I can throw it together in the Magic Bullet in just a minute or two. The problem is the base for the dressing is vegan mayonnaise, which is VERY high in fat.

But I LOVES me a creamy dressing and the thing that make a dressing creamy–oil–does tend to be high in calories and, let’s face it, not very good for you.

However, a few days ago, I happened to be browsing through Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Appetite for Reduction and was intrigued by her Sanctuary Dressing, which uses blanched tofu as its base. According to Isa, blanching tofu takes away the beany taste of raw tofu (a taste which has caused me to reject tofu-based dressings in the past). I gave the dressing a try, and it was absolutely delicious: super creamy and savoury with no trace of that cardboard-y raw tofu taste.

The key is the blanching.

I wondered why I hadn’t come across more dressing recipes that use blanched tofu as a base and started a search. And then I came across this tofu-cashew mayo recipe on aplantifullife.com, which looked intriguing. I did not have any silken tofu left, so I blanched some regular firm tofu and the result was a delicious, rich creamy mayo with no weird raw tofu taste!!

Today I decided to use the tofu mayo as a base for the vegan blue cheese drizzle and it was a resounding success–both James and I loved it and could taste no difference between the blanched tofu version and the fat-laden mayo version.

I then decided, what the hell, I was just going to conflate the two recipes. So here we go–a blanched-tofu-blue-cheese drizzle or, for short….

Best Ever Vegan Blue Cheese DRESSING

12.7-ounce container of silken tofu, BLANCHED (you can also use regular and it works just fine)

1/2 cup cashews (if you don’t have a Vitamix, soak the nuts in boiling water for an hour)

2 TBS + 2 tsp tahini

4 cloves garlic

5 TBS apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/3 cup water

1 tsp French’s mustard

2 TBS nutritional yeast

1 tsp sugar

2 tsp sea salt

1.5 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

Start by cubing the tofu and dropping it into simmering water for three minutes; then place the blanched tofu into ice cold water for two minutes. I do this by putting the tofu in a colander and lowering it into the simmering water. Then I lift out the colander and place it into the bowl of ice water.

Once it’s cooled down, place the tofu in the Vitamix along with the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth and creamy. You will need to scrape down the sides a few times.

This recipe makes a very nice thick dip-type dressing, so you can use it as a dip for vegetables or cauliflower wings, as a drizzle for pizza, or as a sandwich spread. Alternatively, you can thin it down a bit with almond milk or vegetable broth for salad dressing. I don’t bother to thin it down–I just measure a quarter cup onto my salad and toss very well.

The recipe makes three cups of dressing, and it clocks in at a mere 17.5 calories/TBS or 70 calories per quarter cup (vs. 70 cals/TBS or 280 per 1/4 cup in the Virtuous Pie version!).

And the song of the day is Fruit Bats’ “When U Love Somebody”: