How to Make Cashew Cream (Thick, Thin, and Everything In Between)

The first time I made cashew cream, I thought I'd done something wrong. I blended it for what felt like forever, poured it over a bowl of roasted sweet potato, and thought: this is it? This is what people are raving about?

Then I tasted it. And I understood immediately.

It's just two ingredients, three if you count salt. But the result is this quietly luxurious cream that coats things, enriches things, and doesn't taste like "oh you couldn't use dairy." It tastes like a thing that was supposed to exist.

I've been making it at least once a week for years. Here's everything I know. Jump to recipe if you're in a hurry, but the ratio section below is worth reading first.

What you're actually doing (and why it works)

Cashews are lower in fiber than most nuts, which means when you soak and blend them, you get something almost dairy-smooth rather than gritty. The soaking swells the flesh, breaks down enough of the structure that the blender can fully emulsify the fat and water together, and you end up with something that behaves remarkably like cream.

No thickeners. No additives. Just the cashew doing what the cashew was apparently built to do.

The soak: overnight versus the hot shortcut

Standard advice is overnight. Cover your cashews with cold water, leave them on the counter for 6 to 8 hours, drain, rinse, blend. It works perfectly and requires zero thinking.

But I'm not always that organized. The hot-soak shortcut is: pour just-boiled water over your cashews, set a timer for 25 minutes, drain, rinse, blend. Honestly? Nearly identical results. The texture is maybe 5% less silky if I really push for differences, but in a finished dish, nobody notices.

What you want to avoid is blending raw unsoftened cashews and expecting cream. You'll get a thick paste with a slightly grainy mouthfeel. Fine in a pinch. Not cream.

The ratio is the whole game

This is the thing that took me embarrassingly long to figure out. Cashew cream isn't one thing. It's a sliding scale based on how much water you add per cup of soaked cashews.

Start with 1 cup (140 g) of soaked, drained cashews, and then:

• 1/3 cup water: thick. Spreadable. The consistency of sour cream or cream cheese. Use it dolloped on tacos, swirled into soup, or as a base for vegan cheesecake. This is the version you schmear.
• 1/2 cup water: somewhere in between. Pourable but still rich. Good for pasta sauces where you want it to cling.
• 3/4 cup water: pourable cream. Soups, curries, coffee, anything where you want richness without weight. Drizzles beautifully.
• 1 cup or more: cashew milk territory. Thin, slightly sweet, closer to oat milk in behavior.

Start with less water than you think you need. Blend, then assess. Adding more water is trivial. Diluting an overshopped batch is not fun.

You need a decent blender (honest)

I'm not going to pretend a cheap blender will get this perfectly smooth. It won't. A high-speed blender (Vitamix, Blendtec, even a decent NutriBullet) will give you silky cream in 60 to 90 seconds. A standard countertop blender will get you most of the way there if your cashews are well-soaked and you blend longer, maybe 2 to 3 minutes with a stop to scrape the sides.

A food processor won't give you cream. It'll give you something closer to a puree. Still useful. Not the same thing.

This is one of those places where tool quality genuinely matters. Worth knowing going in.

Savory cashew cream

Add lemon juice and a small garlic clove before blending, and you've got something that works in place of sour cream, bechamel, or heavy cream in most savory applications. A pinch of nutritional yeast takes it further toward the cheesy end. Salt aggressively.

I use thick savory cashew cream on loaded baked potatoes, in pasta sauces (add it off the heat so it doesn't split), in gratins instead of cream, and as a base for dressings. It's also what I reach for on tacos instead of the dairy sour cream I grew up with.

It pairs naturally with anything in the how-to category where the original technique relies on cream. Soups especially. Stir it in at the end.

Sweet cashew cream

Same base, different additions. Maple syrup, vanilla extract, maybe a squeeze of lemon for brightness. Blend it thick and you've got a replacement for whipped cream or creme fraiche on fruit, waffles, or crumble. Blend it thinner and it's a pourable dessert cream.

The sweet version is also the foundation of vegan cheesecake, overnight oat toppings, and mousse. Once you start thinking this way, you'll find uses faster than you can make it.

It's also worth noting that people who don't eat vegan often can't tell what they're eating. That's not a trick. It's just a genuinely good ingredient doing its job.

A note on flavor

Cashews have a mild, slightly sweet flavor that mostly disappears into whatever you're making. That's the point. If you want a more neutral base, use fresh water rather than the soaking liquid. If you want a nuttier flavor, you can toast the raw cashews lightly before soaking, though this is more of a flavor choice than a technique one.

For anything where you want a very "clean" flavor (desserts especially), rinse the soaked cashews well. For savory applications where you're adding garlic and lemon anyway, rinsing still matters but the stakes are lower.

This is also a useful starting point if you're exploring substitutes for dairy in cooking. Cashew cream is probably the most versatile one.