Only love beats butter!
The Cooking Cardinal has been in existence for almost 3.5 years, and it has really been something I’ve done as a creative outlet (however infrequently it has become). I’ve always felt like there was something lacking in my photography, since I’ve always just used my …
I’m not quite sure how it happened, or why, but there was one year in high school when I made Death by Chocolate so many times I lost count. Don’t get me wrong, it is incredibly delicious; but after making it repeatedly, it kind of …
This past summer I was doing some blog planning, and asked Brandon if there were any dishes he would like me to make for the site. I was NOT prepared for the flood of suggestions he gave me! One of the first things he said …
I am a firm believer that breakfast is the most important (and possibly delicious) meal of the day, and I definitely prefer savory to sweet. I’ve always made time for it, every morning before school I would have a bowl of cereal or maybe some …
I have to admit, I have been sitting on a draft of this post for weeks now. I started trying to write something quippy about homemade dressings (because they’re awesome), and didn’t get past the first paragraph. If I’m being honest with myself, it’s because …
Bagels top the list as one of my food guilty pleasures; and they are something I could eat every day, which is a bit of a problem. If I’m being honest though, I think it’s actually what’s smeared on top of bagels that I like so much – cream cheese. Be it plain or flavored, it’s delicious. Sure, you can buy flavored cream cheese, but why bother with store bought when you can make your own!
There are different flavors of cream cheese available for breakfast at my work, but I knew I could make better ones at home. I had so many ideas floating around my head for different combinations, and it was hard to pare it down to just two that I was going to make this weekend.
The two I settled on were bacon-green onion and vegetable, and they are easy to make. Both start with softened cream cheese that is whipped up using either a hand mixer (my choice of equipment for this) or you could use a stand mixer. I used one 8oz brick of cream cheese for each of the different flavors.
For the bacon-green onion you just need to cook a few slices of bacon and wash some green onions.
Chop the two into small pieces, and mix into the whipped cream cheese.
The vegetable cream cheese takes a little more prep work, but is totally worth it! You’ll need some bell peppers (any combination of colors will do), carrot, green onions, fresh parsley and dill.
Finely mince the fresh herbs and dice all of the vegetables into small pieces. You want them to be as small and uniform as you can get them so you can spread it on whatever you like. In total, I used about 1/4 to 1/3 of each of the 3 bell peppers I had.
You can spread these on just about anything you want and it’ll be delicious (ok, maybe don’t put them on pancakes or cinnamon rolls… that wouldn’t be very good). I enjoyed them on an Everything bagel, either would also be pretty tasty mixed into some mashed potatoes, or as part of a creamy pasta sauce, or eaten straight out the container with a spoon.
Buy your favorite bagels, get some cream cheese and whatever mix-ins you fancy, and start your day off right with this for breakfast!