Lasagna Goodness! (Vegan and Gluten Free)

I got it in my head that I needed to make lasagna in my slow cooker. Good idea right? Great! Only problem is that I use my slow cooker during the day when I'm at work and pasta can't sit in a slow cooker for 8 hours or more without turning into a mushy mess. So after pondering the best way to do this without having to be in the kitchen all night and wait for hours I came up with a slow cooker/oven combo deal. And it worked! Here's how. 



The Night before:
Soak 1/2 a cup of raw or roasted cashew in water.

The Morning of:
Move the soaking cashews into the fridge.
Cut up two green peppers, one onion, and crumble one package of Soy Tempeh. Add this to the slow cooker. Then add two jars of your favorite pasta sauce or your own homemade sauce. I used jar just to save time. Then I seasoned it with garlic powder, basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Mix together and put on low for 8 hours or until you get home from work.

The Rest:
When you get home you can turn your slow cooker off or put it on warm.
Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees
Take your lasagna noodles and soak them in hot water for about 15 minutes. Or until you are done making the ricotta and the oven is heated.
Make the cashew ricotta.

Drain the cashews and put them in a food processor. Add 1/4 cup of lemon juice, 2 tbsp of olive oil, 1 package of drained and crumbled extra firm tofu, 1.5 tsp of dried basil, two cloves of garlic, salt and pepper to taste. Blend in the food processor until creamy.

At this point you can start layering the lasagna.

Sauce mixture on the bottom.
Pasta layered so it is overlapping a bit.
More sauce.
A layer of cashew ricotta.
A layer of mozzarella.
More sauce.
And repeat until everything is added in. You should get two layers of everything.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 45 minutes. Mine noodles were fully cooked after 45 minutes, but check to make sure they are before you turn the oven off and finish cooking. You made 10 more minutes or so depending on what type of noodles you used.

What I used:
Sauce = Whole Foods organic basil flavored sauces 2 jars
Tempeh = Soy flavored 1 package
Mozzarella = Daiya shreds 1 package
Noodles = Tinkyada gluten free lasagna noodles (these are not no boil noodles, but by soaking them in hot water it softened them up enough that they didn't need to be pre-boiled before cooking the lasagna.)

The cashew ricotta recipe is from Veganomicon!