Costco Sized Philly Cream Cheese- help!

I needed cream cheese for several holiday desserts so I went all in on a gigantic Costco size Philly cream cheese. I still think it made sense cost-wise to purchase it but I have a ton leftover and I hate to see it go to waste. Problem is, I want to use it on a baked good or treat that can go right from the cooling rack to the freezer since we OD’ed on holiday sweets and can’t possibly eat any more right now. I was thinking the simplest solution is a cheesecake since I don’t mind eating defrosted cheesecake but I wanted to see if anyone else has any more creative ideas for recipes that use a ton of cream cheese.

Thanks in advance!

Well cheese cake was my first answer as well (but you’ve thought of that).

What about cream cheese pound cake. That should freeze well and if I remember correctly uses a fair amount of cream cheese. I don’t have a go to recipe but a google search should give you a good basis.

Curious about other’s ideas.

+1 for cream cheese pound cake

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Make rugelach. You can freeze them before baking, then pull them out when you need some nice cookies.

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How big is “gigantic”? More than the 3lb blocks?

Agree with cream cheese frosting, that does freeze quite well. I make a version of RLB’s, essentially equal parts by weight cream cheese, butter, and melted white chocolate. Beat room temp butter and cream cheese together then beat in melted-but-cool white chocolate. Add lemon juice and vanilla extract to taste. One of the things I taste repeatedly for strict quality control … :yum:

In the rugelach vein, cream cheese pie dough. Always nice to have a couple of pie shells in the freezer ready to fill. RLB again: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/flaky-cream-cheese-pie-crust-101857

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It is the three pound block. I used about a third of it so there’s about two pounds left. I just looked and my favorite cheesecake recipe calls for two pounds. But then I have an entire cheesecake in the freezer taunting me. Lol.

Cream cheese pound cake sounds delicious and the cream cheese frosting sounds great too. Actually now this is reminding me that I have an entire batch of ginger cookies that spread so much when baking that I couldn’t get them off the pans intact so I froze them in pieces/crumbles. I had the fleeting idea of making some sort of trifle with them. I could make the cream cheese pound cake and at a later date cube that and layer it with the ginger cookies. Hmm…

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Nestle’s Butterscotch Baking Chips has a recipe for cheesecake bars baked in a lasagna pan. You melt butter with the chips, then mix them with graham cracker crumbs. Pat most into the pan, sprinkle the rest over the standard cheesecake batter before baking. This makes a thin bar, so instead I doubled the amount of batter. Easier to freeze these bars in portions than a whole cheesecake. You should be able to adapt any round cheesecake recipe to bars.

I seldom buy milk but if I have cream cheese on hand, I use a dollop, plus broth, to extend pan drippings into gravy. Freeze cream cheese, cut into ice cube sized blocks, wrap individually, and refreeze.

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Thanks. Great idea to make bars instead of a cheesecake. Freezer space is at a premium right now with leftover Christmas cookie dough so those would be easier to pack in there!

No idea how it would freeze, but my mother used to make a dip involving canned chili (No beans) and cream cheese. Melted in a crockpot and then served at football watching parties. It was extremely rich, heavy, and good.

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Ooooh! Use the ginger cookie crumbles to make the cheesecake crust!

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Not a baked good, maybe a treat, but what about jalapeno poppers? Or just buy bagels and (possibly) lox to go with it.

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I’m home due to the weather today so I think I’m going to give some sort of cheesecake bar a whirl, using those ginger cookies as my crust. I used some of the cream cheese for an onion dip which I usually make with sour cream but then I actually found even more cream cheese in my fridge! Haha.

I’m going to use this Smitten KItchen recipe that calls for a pound and a half of cream cheese and I will sub in my cookie crumbs. Then I will freeze it till we visit my inlaws and I’ll do the sour cream topping that day. I will report back! Very excited!

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The bars were really easy to make. I’m a bit skeptical about how well my cookie crumbs worked in the base but the topping came together and set up nicely and now the whole pan is in the freezer. In the depths of my freezer I found some summer sour cherries (already pitted and ready to use! Thank you July me!) so I think I’ll do a sour cherry topping. The bar idea was great because it was so easy to pop in the freezer so thanks for that fellow HOs!

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Mmmmmmm… Sour Cherries are the best.

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I was going to say ice cream. There are lots of cream cheese ice cream recipes out there. Since cream cheese has stabilizers/gums built-in, it gives desirable (to some) properties in the end result, as well as some tang.

I have made that cheesecake recipe from Smitten Kitchen far too many times. (It’s a frequent request.) I have done almost all the variations she has listed there. I have also used sour cherries. I think the best is the mixed berries in the original recipe, but without the red currants. It’s a pain, washing all that fruit, drying it, hulling and slicing the strawberries. It takes as long as the cheesecake itself. But it’s the perfect topping in my opinion.

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I snuck a couple of nibbles off the side of the bars and I was impressed with the taste and texture of the filling. Minor quibble but I did think the filling looked rather yellow but with the sour cream/cherry topping that won’t matter. I actually wonder if I royally messed up the cookies since the cookie crust seems really chewy and overly oily/buttery but I still think they will be gobbled up.

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These kinds of crusts are difficult to do because different brands of graham crackers and biscuits need more or less butter/sugar. Also, you can safely overbake it since the wet filling is going over top of it.

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Just to report back-- the Smitten sheet pan cheesecake bars were a huge hit at our “second Christmas” celebration this weekend. My ginger cookies were not really successful as the crust (I screwed up the ratio of sugar and butter and it got very hard and stuck a bit to the foil) so I would stick to the suggested crust next time, but the filling and sour cream topping were spectacular. I creamed the cream cheese with the sugar for a really long time as suggested by my pastry chef brother in law and it was really fluffy and light. That went in the freezer until needed and when I defrosted it I baked the sour cream topping right on top. I decided to hoard the sour cherries for myself instead of making a topping. Everyone loved them and some people went back for seconds. I can neither confirm nor deny having one for breakfast this morning. :slight_smile:

The one issue I had was cutting the bars neatly. I made a huge mess getting them into squares and while they were fine to serve to family they were not very attractive looking. @bmorecupcake do you have any tips and tricks for serving these?

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If you are going to top them in the future, what I do is cut them into bars first and then top each individual bar. Otherwise the toppings get in the way while cutting.

The cutting process is kind of laborious. If I have the time, I will freeze them for half hour before cutting. I put the whole thing on a large cutting board and slice down with a large knife and then drag the knife toward me. If I slice down and then pull the knife back up, bits of crust will act as abrasives and ruin the look. Then I wipe the knife clean after each slice. If you got the cheesecake nice and firm in the freezer, you can run your knife under very hot water, then dry it, and it will give me an even cleaner cut. But you still have to clean the knife, then heat it up and dry it again before the next cut.

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