Lately, I’ve been really into this recipe blogger Cookie + Kate. A few weeks ago, I was looking on Pinterest for a vegetarian enchiladas recipe, and I stumbled upon her blog. Funny enough, I shared this black bean sweet potato enchiladas recipe with my friend, and she came right back saying she had recently made this Brussels sprouts pizza with balsamic red onions, also by Cookie + Kate. I had enjoyed the enchiladas so much – I decided I would give the pizza a go. It was AMAZING! You can tell the amount of time she puts into her recipes.
I have been browsing her blog more since, and I decided I wanted to try her vegan lasagna. I’m not vegan, or even vegetarian, but I really enjoy eating that way the majority of the time. I also decided to just go ahead and full send it by making my own marinara sauce, also complements of Cookie + Kate.
This recipe was pretty involved, so I thought it would be fun to take some pictures of the process as a blog post. So here you go!
The first step for me was to prepare the marinara sauce. It required 5 ingredients: one 28-oz can whole peeled tomatoes, one yellow onion, two cloves of garlic, oregano, and olive oil. Plus some red pepper flakes if you want additional spice – I added 🙂
After it’s simmered for 15 min, you mash the garlic on the sides of the pot with a fork, and after 45 min total, you’re done! Cookie + Kate says to remove the onion and discard, but I didn’t have the heart to throw it away. I’m currently saving it for something in my fridge – maybe a chili!
The next step was to chop all the veggies going into my lasagna. I have been making my lunch break my time to prep for the dinners I make, so when dinner time rolls around, I just have to throw everything together. That meant during my lunch break yesterday, I made the marinara and did all my chopping!
In order to replace the cheese in the lasagna, cashews were used. This was perfect because I had exactly 2 cups of cashews on hand leftover from another cashew-based pasta sauce I made a couple months back. The cashews I used were a little stale, but you couldn’t tell at all once I blended them with the other ingredients: water, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, sea salt, and Dijon mustard.
Once I had my marinara sauce and cashew cream ready to go, I could get to the “meat” of the lasagna, AKA the veggies! I ended up using the veggies Cookie + Kate recommended (white onion + carrots + mushrooms +spinach), but I could see this being good with many other veggies, like bell peppers, squash, baby kale, etc!
I cooked my chopped veggies for about 10 min before it was time to add spinach followed by some garlic. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I have been going through garlic cloves so fast with all the cooking I’ve been doing at home during this quarantine! Once you finish cooking the veggies, it’s time to build the lasagna! You need to make sure to buy no boil lasagna noodles, and check to make sure there are no eggs in the ingredients if you’re cooking for someone strictly vegan. The pasta selection at the store right now only had no boil noodles made with eggs left, so I had to break the vegan part of that recipe here shhhhh. Anyways, there are 10 layers of the lasagna in total, and I found this part to be very satisfying to put together haha.
After you get done with putting together the layers, you pop the lasagna into the oven @ 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 min, and then rotate it and bake for another 5-10 min. After I let it cool for about 15 min, I topped it with some leftover cashew cream and rosemary from my mom’s garden.
So to the real important stuff: taste. This was honestly really great “despite” being vegan! The veggies are full of flavor, and the cashew cream has the consistency of ricotta cheese. Between the yumminess of the cashew cream, veggies, and homemade marina sauce, this lasagna was plenty flavorful. The addition of rosemary on top was a really nice touch. Cookie + Kate added basil to hers which also sounds great!
I have my last week of class (ever!) next week and finals shortly after, so I think my cooking will be much less involved in the coming weeks. It was so fun to make this, and I will definitely be enjoying some as freezer leftovers during finals! I definitely recommend checking out the Cookie + Kate blog for yummy, healthy recipes. Thanks for reading about my take on her recipe 🙂
This looks so delicious! You can make it for me anytime! And happy to see some rosemary on top!