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Gnocchi with creamy vegan pumpkin cheese sauce.
This creamy and extra cheesy pumpkin cheese sauce is the perfect comfort food for these colder days. Since this recipe is super simple and quick to make with just a few simple ingredients, it makes a lovely weeknight dinner. Gnocchi with Pumpkin Cheese Sauce is also totally customizable, so you can get extra creative with this recipe.
If you follow me on Instagram, you have probably seen that I had a veeeeeery painful wisdom tooth surgery recently. My upper two ones were removed already a while ago with almost no pain, so I wasn’t really afraid of what’s gonna happen with the lower ones. BIG MISTAKE!
Everything went horribly, from start to finish. First of all they f*cked up the painkilling injections, 3 times!!! They started to drill into my tooth and jaw even though I told them I still feel everything. When I couldn’t handle the pain anymore and was crying and shaking like crazy they finally believed me, and gave another shot of that numbing injection.
Then on the other side it took almost an hour to remove the tooth. It was apparently in a weird position, so they broke the tooth into many small pieces, and worked on it for ages. It felt like forever and I was still in such a shock, that I was just sobbing uncontrollably the whole time.
The next day my face was fully swollen, I looked like a giant hamster. I couldn’t open my mouth for 5 days more than a centimeter, and my whole body hurt so so so badly. And of course I could only eat mashed and super soft foods. Yum!
On the first week it was literally just blended soups, mashed potato, and all kind of baby foods I ate. Now, on the second week I can finally start to chew, so things like a soft banana, and little overcooked gnocchi are my new favorite foods. Plus I finally started to enjoy food again. Yay!!!
Gnocchi w/ Pumpkin Cheese Sauce
Luckily there was a good thing to come out of that nasty surgery: this gnocchi recipe with pumpkin cheese sauce!
This is a very basic recipe, but the beauty of it is that you can upgrade it in million ways. To be honest, if it wasn’t for my toothache, I would have done one or more of these things here to make the recipe even better:
- Add some pretty green veggies to the boiling gnocchi, such as kale, spinach, asparagus, green peas, snap peas, snow peas, broccoli, or bell pepper.
- Add some caramelized or roasted veggies on top, like onions, zucchini, bell pepper, eggplant, or carrots.
- Make the sauce spicy with fresh chili, or chopped pickled jalapenos, or simply some Sriracha.
- Or add extra flavor to the sauce with diced sun-dried tomatoes, artichokes, or olives.
- Pour everything in a baking dish, and bake it until bubbly and crispy on the edges.
- For an even better version add some shredded vegan cheese on top of it, and bake until nice and melted.
- Top it all with something crunchy, like walnuts, pecans, almonds, pine nuts, or hazelnuts.
- Plus add lots of fresh herbs on top!
If you try this recipe, let me know! I would highly appreciate if you could leave a comment and rate it. Also don’t forget to take a picture and tag it on Instagram (use the hashtag #greenevi) or post it on Facebook! I love seeing what you come up with! ♥︎
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Gnocchi w/ Pumpkin Cheese Sauce
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
Ingredients
- 750g/26 oz gnocchi, use GF if needed
- 1/2 cup of cashews (60g)
- 1.5 cups of diced pumpkin (200g)
- 1 onion, roughly chopped
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 1.5 cups of unsweetened plant milk
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 2 tbsp tapioca flour
- 1.5 tsp mustard
- 1.5 tsp miso
- salt, pepper
- toppings of your choice (see notes above)
Instructions
- Prepare gnocchi according to package instructions. Drain and set aside.
- Add cashews, pumpkin, onion, and 3 cloves of garlic to a pot, and cover with water. Cook for 15-20 minutes, or until pumpkin is soft. Drain and add to a blender.
- Add the rest of the ingredients to the blender (except for gnocchi), and blend until completely smooth.
- Transfer mixture to a pot, and cook over medium heat for 3-5 minutes, stirring constantly, until sauce thickens.
- Add gnocchi to the sauce, mix well, and serve immediately with toppings of your choice. Enjoy!
- Prep Time: 5 mins
- Cook Time: 25 mins
Looks yummy! Glad that you enjoyed it.
Thanks, Angie 🙂
Aww, what a mess with the tooth extraction. I’m so sorry you had to go through something so painful. Hugs.xx
The dish looks amazing, like everything you cook.
Thank you so much, Anca!
Yes, it was a total mess, I really didn’t expect everything going so bad 😀
Extracting wisdom teeth is the worst! I had to be put fully under to remove mine. And my face was ballooned-sized for weeks. I feel ya! And I hope you’re healing well.
This recipe looks so good – the perfect comfort meal for “balloon-ness”. Heh!
Thank you so much!
Oh gosh, that balloon-sized face sounds real bad, I guess I was lucky then I only looked like a hamster 😀 😀
How I wish it was possible to teleport food! I would be licking this plate clean right now 😛
I wish I could share it with you!!!
If I used canned pumpkin purée do you think I would use the same amount of plant milk?
Hi Dale,
I hope my answer doesn’t come too late yet.
It depends on the consistency of the canned pumpkin you use. If it’s a very thin one, maybe use a little less milk. You can always start out with less liquid, then just as more as you need. 🙂