There are substitutes for wheat and lots of things to use in place of milk, but it is very difficult to replace the creaminess of sour cream.
Until she commented on it, I really hadn’t thought about how unique so many dairy products really are. I am not sure that sour cream would be nearly so high on my list, but who knows? If you take it away from me, it just might be. I wanted to surprise her with an alternative; so I looked around online and stumbled onto a couple links for making sour cream out of cashews. I think “skeptical” might be far too weak a word for what I was thinking. In the interest of surprising my friend with a treat she had been missing, I decided to give it a try. And it WORKED. I am still shocked that a handful of nuts could be transformed into something like this, but it really did work! If you are a regular sour cream user, I will tell you now, that on its own, this does not taste exactly like sour cream to ME. (My friend, on the other hand, not having tasted sour cream in quite a while, thought it was very close.) However, in a dish, a dip or a sauce, it DOES taste like sour cream. I made my family’s favorite Homemade Ranch Dip using this sour cream and I could not tell the difference. Side by side at the table, they both tasted like the same dip. I have a couple of friends with milk allergies that are excited to be able to enjoy a dairy-free ranch dressing once again.
