My favorite vegan cheese

I have tried various recipes for making vegan cheese, some of them requiring a lot of ingredients, steps, and time.  This one is my favorite, because it's easy and quick to make, and it's versatile and tasty.

    1 cup raw cashews
    1/2 cup tapioca flour (also called tapioca starch)
    2 tsp lemon juice
    2 1/2 cups water
    3 T. nutritional yeast
    1 1/2 tsp sea salt
    1 tsp garlic powder
    1/2 tsp pepper

I soak the cashews for as long as I have time (sometimes it's only 10 minutes; sometimes it's several hours), then whir everything up in the blender till it's completely smooth.  Pour it into a saucepan.  Cook and stir until it thickens into one big gelatinous mound of yum.  I have experimented with putting other seasoning in it as well, such as smoked paprika or Italian seasoning, or dill, or even salsa.   

I use that cheese for quesadillas mostly, although I have been known to just spread it on crackers.  I have discovered that if there are leftovers of something that Noah didn't especially like the first time around, I can put it between 2 tortillas with this cheese and make it into a quesadilla, and he loves it.  I've been getting more creative with my quesadillas lately.  Yesterday for breakfast, I made Mexican ones.  I started with the cheese, added salsa, black beans, and cumin on a tortilla.

 I spread more cheese on another tortilla, topped the first one, and cooked and flipped till it was a nice, crispy quesadilla.

Today, Noah wanted that same thing for breakfast again, but I was out of tortillas.  I did have tortilla chips, so he had the brilliant idea of just making a dip out of the cheese, salsa, beans, and cumin.  

My best source for raw cashews (after much trial and error) is the Indian grocery store on Pioneer Parkway in Peoria.