For months, I tried to achieve similar results with other types of nuts, but eventually, I gave up, accepting that none of them came close to the texture and creaminess of cashews.
Why am I still cautious about using cashews for anything other than yoghurt and butter? Because their production can be extremely harmful, both to the environment due to the deforestation needed to make land for plantations, and to the workers on the plantations and in processing factories. Here are a few resources that explain what I mean: video Cashew nuts: Painful working conditions behind popular snack, audio The Hidden Cost: Cashew Nut Processing, article Cashew Nuts: The Hidden Cost of Production, article Cashew Nuts: A Toxic Industry.
In the future, I plan to experiment with other ingredients, perhaps locally produced almonds, other seeds, or even soy milk. For now, I’ve developed this yoghurt recipe to make cashew butter, as a way to avoid buying it from stores at a steep price and with packaging, no matter how sustainable that packaging is advertised to be (since bioplastic is not sustainable, no matter what anyone says).
So here is a recipe I don’t recommend often, but that can be less harmful if the cashews are Fairtrade and bought in bulk.
