my daughter loves bagels with cream cheese. she also loves strawberries. so you can imagine her sheer glee when she saw a strawberry-flavored creamy spread on bagel sample at the grocery store the other day. sheer glee, yall. she tried it and said it was "deeee-licious" and in her sweet little way, convinced me to buy her the strawberry-flavored creamy spread.
we made our way to the dairy aisle and found the product on the shelf. the first thing i had her do was read me the list of ingredients. (we do this a lot before we buy food. i highly recommend.) and basically it was this:
chemical, flavoring, unpronounceable, chemical, additive, preservative, unpronounceable, chemical, flavoring, high fructose corn syrup, Red 40.uh, no thanks. her face fell. i shrugged. we know better than to put that junk in our bodies. so we put that stuff back on the shelf and moved on. and it made me mad and sad that my sweet girl couldn't have her strawberry cream cheese. and then i had a brilliant idea. because ideas that are born in love are usually brilliant, amiright?!
we can make our own strawberry cream cheese! #recipehack
i remembered we bought 2 pints of fresh strawberries from the farmer's market just the day before, and in the store, i found some plain organic cream cheese. that's it. mix the two together and YUMMY!
// farmer's market homemade strawberry cream cheese //
ingredients
8 ounces plain organic cream cheese
5-6 fresh strawberries
recipe
puree strawberries in food processor / blender. i pulsed in my Magic Bullet about 4 times.
empty the cream cheese from it's original container into a large bowl. (set aside the original container don't throw it away) pour the pureed strawberries into the bowl. mix the strawberries and cream cheese together. i used a potato masher, a fork, and a spatula to get it well combined. return the cream cheese to it's original container. seal and refrigerate. spread on toasty bagels and enjoy your chemical-free fresh farmer's market homemade strawberry cream cheese!
