Existing vegan cheeses

Treeline Classic Artisanal Treenut Cheese

Described as "a delicious creamy non-dairy cheese made from fine cultured and aged cashew nuts with a hint of mesquite smoke for a captivatingly tangy flavor".

We tasted this at the August 18th real vegan cheese meeting.

• Ingredients: Cashew nuts, filtered water, non-dairy L. acidophilus, salt, barley malt flour, mesquite flavor, tricalcium phosphate (anti-caking agent, less than 0.05%).
• Price: $10 for 3.9 oz ($41 per pound) at the local cheese shop.

Opinions

Marc: It's the best vegan cheese I've ever tasted. It's salty and has a good texture. The taste is definitely different from cheese, but it actually works with crackers as a substitute for something like aged gouda (though I'd still much prefer the aged gouda).

Patrik: I found the appearance to be particularly unappetizing. It's a grayish hockey puck of a slighty dried out and shrunken undefined substance. Taste was so-so. Not sure if anyone would eat it, if it wasn't for the salt.

Rachel: Like if cashew butter and halvah had a very salty baby. Decent on a cracker. Didn't remind me of cheese so much.

Daiya

Information on ingredients, based on http://soulveggie.blogs.com/my_weblog/2009/04/daiya-responds-re-vegan-cheeses-ingredients.html :

Purified water, natural whole ground cassava and/or arrowroot flours, high oleic sunflower and/or safflower and/or identity-preserved high oleic canola oil, coconut oil and/or palm fruit oil, pea protein, salt, inactive yeast, vegetable glycerin, natural vegan flavors (derived from plants), xanthan gum, sunflower lecithin, natural vegan enzymes, natural vegan bacterial cultures, citric acid, natural color. Kind regards, Greg Blake, Daiya Consumer Relations

Opinions

Rachel: I couldn't eat any dairy or soy for about a year and a half, so I ate Daiya. Like a whole bunch of Daiya. I found it pretty icky raw, but it did "melt and stretch" when heated...vegan cheese gold. Came off as vaguely cheese-like melted on pizza or salsa-y quesadillas, but, for me, it was less successful in contexts without a lot of masking ingredients.