I love products that help make vegan diets effortless. Lately, I’ve become a devoted fan of the Follow Your Heart company, which makes it especially easy to whip up many of the foods I love—homemade pizza, traditional potato salad, and mac ‘n cheese. I’ve been using their Vegenaise for several years. It’s a huge leap forward in taste and texture from the tofu mayonnaise products of the past. In fact, it tastes more like real mayonnaise—the old-fashioned homemade kind—than commercial mayonnaise does.

More recently, I’ve discovered their Vegan Gourmet line of dairy substitutes. I recently used the sour cream and cream cheese substitutes in place of my usual favorite Tofutti brand for my favorite mushroom strudel recipe and was very happy with the results. The sour cream has a nice kind of tangy flavor that makes it perfect on top of black beans or burritos, too.

And while, I’m not a huge fan of most brands of vegan cheese, I really love the Vegan Gourmet cheese alternatives, which come in Cheddar, Monterey jack, mozzarella, and nacho flavors. And as the labels proudly boast, they melt! Admittedly, “melt” might be somewhat of an overstatement for what this cheese does. But it softens enough when heated that you can mix it into pasta or scrambled tofu and get a very nice cheesy kind of consistency.

None of these products are particularly low in fat—which is actually part of the reason for their success in vegan cooking. Their higher fat content provides some of the creaminess that is important for some recipes. I find all of the Follow Your Heart products at my local food co-op, and have seen some of them appearing in more mainstream grocery stores, too. You can check their website to locate stores that carry them.