Name: Vegan Chocolate Oat Milk with Cashews
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 15 min
Ingredients: 3 1/2 cups water (for blending ); 1 cup rolled oats (gluten free); 1/4 cup cashews (soaked (15 min boiling water quick soak or 2-hour soak)); 4 Medjool dates (pitted, soaked (15 min quick soak with hot water)); 2 tablespoons cocoa powder; 1/2 teaspoon vanilla; 1 pinch salt

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Homemade Vegan Chocolate Oat Milk with Cashews is so easy to make at home and better than store-bought! It’s creamy, chocolatey, and completely dairy-free. No added oils or preservatives.

what is vegan milk?

It’s a plant-based milk alternative made from grains, nuts, seeds, or even fruit.

If you’re looking for more plant-based dairy-free milk options we also make regular Oat Milk which can be used in many recipes or even enjoyed with your morning cereal.

HOW TO MAKE CHOCOLATE OAT MILK WITH CASHEWS

You’ll need a few things first:

A nut milk bag is an essential tool for this oat milk recipe. The oats and cashews in the milk are really tiny, you need to use a nut milk bag or a cheesecloth to catch all of the little bits. Otherwise, you’ll have gritty milk. You can use nut milk bags for nut milk, juices, and we even use to strain our elderberry syrup.

We use a Vitamix in our home. We recommend using a high-speed blender to make plant-based milk. It really breaks the ingredients down and creates a smooth and creamy dairy-free milk. When using a traditional blender you may need to blend for 1 minute instead of 30 seconds.

A gravy separator. We love this for making our plant-based milk recipes. It makes it super simple for 3 reasons. 1. we can measure the water. 2. we can strain it into the container, and 3. we can also use it to pour or drain the milk right into the milk jug without making a mess. It’s a handy little gadget for making nut milk.

NOTE: Oats contain phytic acid which can be good or bad for some. (1) Phytic acid can impair the absorption of some nutrients, like iron (2), calcium, and zinc. At the same time, phytic acid also has benefits. Research has been shown that it can help reduce the risk of colon cancer (3).

If phytic acid is a concern for you, you may want to soak them for 15-30 minutes to remove some of the phytates.

After soaking you’ll discard the water and then rinse the oats.

Now it’s time to blend the oats into oat milk. Place the rinsed and drained oats or dry oats into a high-speed blender with water, soaked cashews, dates, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, and a pinch of salt and blend for 20-30 seconds. Do not over blend or it will become gummy as over blending heats up the oats.

Once the chocolate oat milk is blended you’ll pour it into a nut milk bag placed over a bowl. We use the gravy separator so that it’s easier to pour into our glass bottle.

Gently squeeze the milk out of the nut milk bag. Start squeezing from the top of the bag to the bottom.

Stop squeezing once you feel the milk coming out is getting slimy.

Pour the milk into your favorite glass bottle to refrigerate and enjoy within 4 days.

HOW DO YOU SWEETEN VEGAN MILK?

We use soaked dates in the recipe, tested a few sweeteners and this is the one we all preferred.

WHY DOES THIS CHOCOLATE OAT MILK HAVE CASHEWS?

Most plant-based chocolate milk products use oils (rapeseed oil). Instead of using oil we use a whole food plant-based oil like cashews. It provides the creaminess we’re looking for without using a processed oil. You can soak the cashews for 2 hours or you can quickly soak the cashews in 15 minutes using boiling water.

HELP! MY PLANT-BASED MILK SEPARATED

The chocolate milk will separate, just like any other plant-based milk, the water just rises to the top. Give it a good shake and it’s ready to enjoy.

recipe notes:

you can use dry or soaked oats – do not over soak the oats, it will end up slimy
do not use quick oats, you can use rolled oats, gluten-free rolled oats, or even steel-cut oats.
you can use your favorite sweetener if you do not like dates.
to make this nut-free omit the cashews and reduce the water by 1/2 cup.

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