Shavuot is 1 day away, but who’s counting? (Sorry, I couldn’t resist making an Omer joke.) It’s a celebration of when God gave the Jews the Torah. It’s customary to eat dairy products on this day instead of meat or fish that gets eaten at most Jewish celebratory meals. There is a lot of eating in Jewish tradition. The few fasts that we have throughout the year don’t even come close to making up for it.
There is no way that I’m having Shavuot without cheese cake. It would be a sin and a crime against humanity. There’s really no reason that I should go without. There are a lot of great tofu cream cheese substitutes out there, so it’s really an easy thing to do.
- Yield: 12
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
Vegan “Cheese” Cake
I think that this is much easier to make than the "real" thing, and everybody loves it.
Ingredients
- ground petit beurre biscuits - 2 cups
- margarine - 1/2 cup
- vegan cream cheese - 2 tubs (8 oz. each)
- Rich's whip - 1 carton
- sugar - 2 tablespoons
- vanilla pudding - 1 package
- lemon juice - 2 tablespoons
Instructions
- Melt margarine and mix in the cookie crumbs.
- Pack the 2/3 of the biscuit mixture tightly in the bottom of a spring form pan.
- Put Rich's in a mixer and mix until stiff.
- Add the rest of the ingredients, minus the crumbs and mix together.
- Sprinkle the rest of the crumbs on top of the "cheese" mixture.
- Pour on top of the crumbs and refrigerate for at least 5 hours.
There’s very little added sugar in this recipe. That’s because there is plenty of sugar in the base ingredients. There is no need to add a lot more.
There are a lot of nice things about living in Israel. The fact that the normal, everyday instant pudding mix is parve (has no dairy) is a real plus. As a matter of fact, if you actually want pudding, just use soy milk and you’re good to go. There’s no need to look further than the regular supermarket shelf.
When I lived in the States, we always used graham crackers for making the crust. It’s hard to find graham in Israel, and when you can, it’s expensive. I used to think that nothing else would work, but Petit biscuits work wonderfully. I would never have thought to substitute them if it weren’t for the cheese cake kits that they sell this time of year.
I wish everyone a Chag Sameach and Happy Cheesecake day!
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Looking forward to tasting this on Shavuot:)
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What size cream cheese tubs are used? Is that the regular toffuti brand cream cheese tub size?
Hi Peter! I didn’t even occur to me that that was a question – they only import one size of toffuti cream cheese to Israel. It’s the 8 oz size. I’m going to update the recipe and add the size. I hope you enjoy it!