Strawberry Cream Cheese

posted by Megan on Mar 12, 2022 (last updated 9/14/22) 0 comments »

This recipe happened almost by accident. After making several tests of this amazing strawberry ice cream, I had both cream cheese and strawberry puree leftover. Did I mention that there were also bagels in the pantry? This strawberry cream cheese was a hit at our house.

bagel half with strawberry cream cheese spread over the cut side on a white plate

There is much to love about this. Unless the cream cheese you’re using has them, there’s absolutely no artificial ingredients in this recipe. Cream cheese + strawberries + honey.

Strawberry flavor

I tested this recipe twice with different methods of working the strawberry flavor in. For the first test, I roasted the strawberries for 10 minutes and pureed them. By the time I had the strawberry flavor I wanted in the final product, the cream cheese itself was weepy.

Since there’s so much water in fresh fruit, you need to add a lot of it to get a decent flavor. For the next test, I pureed the strawberries and reduced them down into a thicker paste. Think of how tomato paste is compared to tomato juice. Concentrated with minimal moisture.

The reduced puree was the perfect solution! I was able to use the entire batch of puree, which ended up only being about 1/4 cup after reducing. No waste and perfect, intense strawberry flavor without being runny.

Sweetener

You don’t need much, since this isn’t frosting or cake filling. I used about a tablespoon and a half of honey, but you could add or subtract by a half if you wanted to.