How to Make 5 Flavored Cream Cheese Recipes (Easy & Delicious!)

Bold Bakers, how to make cream cheese is one of my biggest bowl baking basics videos with over 4 million views. If you google how to make cream cheese, my video comes up. So it's a really fantastic recipe, really easy to make. I'm gonna show you how to make it again because I want to show you how you can turn my homemade cream cheese base into different flavors both sweet and savory. They're really delicious and fun to make. So to make our cream cheese, you wanna start out in a heavy bottom sauce pan and I'm going to add in full fat milk. Now you want full fat milk because full fat will give you the most curds. Do not try and use a semi-skimmed or anything like that. You need all the fat in here. So most of us can only get a hold of pasteurized milk which is very common. So use that. If you do have unpasteurized milk then that will give you bigger curds and probably make for even better cream cheese. So whatever you want to do. We're gonna turn this on to a medium high heat. It's gonna take a few minutes and we're just going to wait until we see a kind of skin form on the top and it's almost to a simmer. So we've already covered our cream. The other very important ingredient to make cream cheese is an acid. I like to use lemon juice. You can also use flavorless vinegar or you can even use apple cider vinegar. My preference is to use lemon juice because I feel like you can't taste it as much in the finished product where I think vinegar you can. Do not use lemon juice out of a carton. You have to use fresh lemon juice. So just remember that one. So come here to me. I want you to see this is the stage that we're looking for. It's just dying to simmer but we're not going to let it and a skin has formed on top. So I'm gonna turn it down a little bit now and I'm going to start to add in the acid one tablespoon at a time. The reason we do it one tablespoon at a time is because it could take more, could take less. All of, you know, the measurement might be too much. The one thing I don't like to do after I add in the acid is mix it too much. So this is an interesting time. I just added in the majority of my lemon juice. I can see that curds are starting to separate from the whey because it's starting to get a little bit almost greeny because of the lemon juice and I'm starting to see kind of like watery whey. I just needed to heat up a little bit more to get more curds. If you feel like you're not getting enough curds, add in more acid. So there you go. This is what I was waiting for. There's our whey and these are our curds. That's how easy the first step of cream cheese is. I'm gonna bring it over to the countertop now. We can keep on going. So here we are. I have my station set up like any good prepared chef. I have a bowl, I have a tight sieve and I have cheesecloth. So here we go now. Pass your curds and your whey through your cheesecloth. I will say if you haven't got a cheesecloth, that's okay. Use a thin tea towel, nothing that's like fuzzy or anything and that will work well too. Now what you're going to want to do here is let this hang and drain for around 15 minutes or so. It'll also cool down, it'll be easier to handle but we just need to get as much whey away from those curds as possible. So our cream cheese has cooled down. Pull up that cheesecloth and just get out any extra liquid, any whey that hasn't come out. You want to make sure you wring it out really well because if you leave whey in there it actually can make it spoil and it won't be as fresh for as long. So just try and get out as much as possible. Okay lovely, so we have our cream cheese curds, we have our whey. Now I don't want you to throw this away, this can be used in baking, using smoothies, you can use this as a drink. So on to our next step. You do need a food processor or some sort of a blender for this part. We're gonna add our curds in there. Snap on your lid and you want to blend them up for around 3 minutes until they're really lovely and smooth. So sometimes people ask why was my homemade cream cheese grainy? And that can happen, you really need to whip it up really well in a food processor, get it really lovely and smooth. And if it's still not really smooth, add in a little bit of whey or a little touch of cream and then keep on blending. It'll become so much softer that way. But honestly the better blender you have it'll be easier to get rid of those lumps. So this is looking really good and nice and smooth, I'm gonna add in some salt, cause cream cheese needs salt. This'll lift all that flavour. And then I think we're good. Look at this! Beautiful, homemade cream cheese. It's really good. You can't taste the acid from the lemon juice, but it has a little bit of a twang at the same time. It's also warm which is absolutely delicious. I have like homemade warm cream cheese. Let's take this base and transform it. First thing we're gonna do is make whipped cream cheese. So black cream cheese is like firmer with less liquid. Whipped cream cheese has like a liquid in it. We're just gonna add a splash of milk or cream in there. Make it a little bit softer. And this is what we're gonna use to make our cream cheese spread. It's all the different flavours. Beautiful. Okay, let's get started with our first flavour. So for all the flavours I'm gonna blend mine up in a food processor to get my ingredients nice and fine. But you can chop them by hand and then just mix them all together. That is totally fine. The first flavour I'm gonna start out with is chive and garlic. So into my whipped cream cheese base. So throw your chives in there and your bulbs of garlic. Blend that together until it's nice and smooth and all broken down. It's one of the reasons why I like to use a food processor cause it blends everything together really well and it also changes the colour. Look at that. Absolutely delicious. Garlic-y, chives, perfect for like an everything bagel and like maybe some tomato slices on top. There it is, a nice big tub. Oh, yeah. Whoo! Garlic, salty, kind of onion-y from the chive. Bit of smoked salmon on that. All day long. All day long I can't buy it for that. Okay, got many more to go. I'm gonna pop that cream cheese in the fridge. We're gonna move on to our next savoury flavour which is sun-dried tomato and basil. So into your food processor, add your homemade cream cheese, sun-dried tomatoes that have been hydrated in oil. Get the oil in there too, that's just like more flavour and it's also going to add a lovely colour to our cream cheese. Nice big old lump of garlic because why not. And then some basil, or if you live in America like I do, basil. On with the lid. Blend. Ahh! I have a feeling I'm gonna love this one. I love sun-dried tomatoes. I think I love them because of the oil and how kind of fatty they are. I love sun-dried tomatoes. Just a great combo, okay. I'm gonna pop this into the fridge. Up next is my all-time favourite, smoked salmon and dill. For smoked salmon, start out with your whipped cream cheese. Fresh dill, which I love the most in the world. I'm going to stop singing now. Chopped smoked salmon, yummy yummy yummy. My favourite. A little bit of red onion. You could also do some capers in here, just an FYI. And a splash of lemon juice. Because you know when you have smoked salmon and you kind of feel it in your cheeks, you're like oh yeah it needs a little bit of lemon juice. Sinead. There you go. That one only takes a few seconds because most things are ready to go. Oh man. I'm in trouble. I cannot have around 3 pounds of flavoured cream cheese in my house because I know exactly how that's gonna go down. Not good. And I also have a fresh bag of bagels. Another delicious flavour, however, we've got more to go. We're gonna move on to our sweet flavours now. Strawberry cream cheese. Fresh strawberries. Not frozen, they get too watery. A little bit of powdered sugar. Softened cream cheese. And you want to blend this up just a little bit. Don't blend it for too long or it'll get very loose and watery. Oh look at this. Look at that pretty colour. Mmm. Oh yum. You know what, I've never had strawberry cream cheese before. Oh that's yummy. I am pleasantly surprised. Which is a good thing I suppose considering I'm telling you guys how to make it. Because someone's gonna have to eat all this cream cheese. Have to say I'm very fond of this one and it's a beautiful colour. I'm gonna pop this into the fridge, we're gonna move on to our last one. I saved the best for last. Our last flavour is chocolate cream cheese. And I'm pretty sure this will be eaten straight out of the bowl in my house. So start off with your whipped cream cheese. A little bit of powdered sugar. And then I have a bittersweet chocolate melted. Do bittersweet because it's less sugar, it's richer, it's gonna be almost like a chocolate mousse on your bagel or whatever you want to use it. So that is melted and it's been cooled. We don't want to let that chocolate sit there too long. We don't want it to harden. So once you get it in there, start to move. Lovely. It almost tastes like chocolate cream cheese frosting. I don't know if this is for breakfast or if it's for dessert or both. All I know is that's good. I think I was writing I saved the best for last because this is really delicious. I want to get them all together now and just have a little look at our beautiful cream cheese flavours. I wanted to bring all my cream cheese together and create this beautiful bagel spread. This is how food should be enjoyed. There should be lots of it. It should be shared amongst friends. It should be casual. It should be help yourself. It should be pretty. And it should be good. Each cream cheese has its own unique flavours, both sweet and savoury. From the sun dried tomato and basil, to the strawberry, chives and onion, chocolate, even the smoked salmon, dill and onions. To be honest with you, I don't think I can pick a favourite. I love them all. I really hope you enjoyed this video and if you want to see more baking basics, more summer recipes, seasonal, whatever it is, get comfy because I've got hours of content for you to check out. I'll see you back here again really soon.