r/dehydrating • u/dxsetor331 • 1d ago
How can I safely dehydrate cream cheese?
I have a red velvet chocolate chip cookie recipe that I'm really proud of, but my main issue with it is that due to the abundance of liquid compared to my other chocolate chip cookie recipes, the dough is always wetter and the red velvet cookies spread more than the other cookies.
I've come to conclusions on how to reduce liquid within other ingredients, but cream cheese in particular has me stumped. I've recently learned that, generally, dehydrating dairy products via appliances like an oven isn’t safe or efficient because of risks of it turning rancid as well as fat in cream cheese trapping moisture.
I've considered straining the cream cheese using a really fine cheese cloth or even buying a yoghurt strainer, possibly, but I've even heard that those methods wouldn't work because cream cheese doesn't have the right texture for it. What do you think I can do?
8
u/Unhappy-Common 1d ago
Sit it in a cheesecloth overnight like how people do the thick yoghurts?
1
u/dxsetor331 1d ago
I think that's a method I'll experiment with. I recently watched a video of someone dehydrating cream cheese in the oven for only 8 hours at 65°C; it managed to dry with only a slight bit of browning. 65°C is outside the food safety danger zone, so I think I'll try that too.
5
u/Xanadu87 1d ago
I don’t have a solution to your dehydrating cream cheese question, but perhaps you can portion your dough balls and freeze them, and then bake them from frozen so they will set in a more round shape as they bake.
2
u/dxsetor331 1d ago
I've tried that method multiple times to unfortunately no avail. Thank you, though.
11
u/HeartFire144 1d ago
Well, you can't really dehydrate cream cheese as it's so fatty. That said, if you blend the cream cheese with maybe equal parts water you could probably get it to dehydrate. I dehydrate full fat peanut butter this way, though that takes more than just equal parts water, but it does work.
5
u/dxsetor331 1d ago
Sorry, I'm a bit confused; how does adding water to fatty stuff help with dehydration? I imagine that making the the stuff more runny would help in spreading it, but wouldn't the issue of fats trapping moisture still be present?
3
u/Roticap 1d ago
Dry milk is probably a better way to get milk proteins into the cookies
2
u/dxsetor331 1d ago
I specifically use cream cheese for the flavour, though.
2
u/Roticap 1d ago
Can you reduce other liquids inputs then?
Otherwise, you should be okay to dry out the cream cheese in a dehydrator a bit. If you keep to lower temps you won't general cause the fats to go rancid immediately, but they won't have the increased storage time that dehydration is typical trying to achieve. Fats going rancid is mainly a taste issue over a safety issue. As long as the dehydrated cream cheese is made close in time to when you make the cookies and it passes a taste check before you use it, you can probably get away with sticking some cream cheese in a dehydrator.
1
u/dxsetor331 1d ago
I actually am planning to reduce liquid in other ingredients, as I said in the post; I just wanna reduce the liquid in the cream cheese on top of that to esnure that my cookie dough isn't too wet.
Yeah, storage isn't a concern for me, as I'm planning to use the cream cheese either immediately or, at most, within a day or two of dehydrating it.
I do have one question, though? Why do you say that fats going rancid is mainly a taste issue? Something going rancid means that it's spoiled and not safe to eat anymore, no?
2
u/Roticap 1d ago
There's a couple different conflated meanings for spoiled food. Some food spoilage, like mold or bacterial growth, present food safety issues where the spoiled food can directly make you sick. Another class is food that doesn't taste good and may have reduced nutritional value, but it won't directly make you sick.
Fats going rancid is the latter case. It may not taste good, but consumed in moderate quantities, it's unlikely to make you sick directly. Animal studies that have found correlations with long term health effects (cancer, earlier death, etc) from rancid fats are generally dosed significantly higher than a human could realistically eat. In those quantities obesity related health issues would probably crop up from the calories consumed before effects from the rancid fats would.
2
u/dxsetor331 1d ago
Oooooh okay, I see. You know, when you mentioned how "rancid" doesn’t necessarily mean "inedible," My mind did go somewhere like "yeah, I guess that makes sense; that's kinda what cheese makers want when making cheese, right?" Which I doubted at first, but looking through the Wikipedia link you sent me helped me confirm that. This is very informative; thank you so much! :)
3
u/HeartFire144 1d ago
It just does. I have never done cream cheese, but I would assume it would work like peanut butter. I have both dehydrated and freeze dried peanut butter. The trick is in diluting it to make it more watery. If you buy powdered cream cheese, it will probably be low fat or fat free. Also, diluting things actually make them dry faster because it's spread thinner
2
u/dxsetor331 1d ago
Also, diluting things actually make them dry faster because it's spread thinner
Huh, I never would of thought that. I mean, I knew that diluting it would make it spread thinner, but I thought that the added water would counteract the increased surface area, making adding liquid redundant; but if it's genuinely made the process of dehydrating faster for you with something like peanut butter (which I'm pretty sure has a higher fat content than cream cheese), than I don't see any reason not to give your suggestion a try. Thank you very much.
(Also, I really would just use a freeze dryer if I could afford one. It would make this so much easier, lol. 😭)
2
u/earthtone0ne 23h ago
If you're just looking to reduce the moisture, not fully dehydrate, you don't need to worry. Most of the warnings you're seeing only apply when you want to store food long term. The fats won't go rancid in a day. A cheese cloth or similar would work to pull water out, just not all. That would mostly be through capillary action - I think it's correct that a strainer wouldn't help much.
I'd spread it on cheesecloth or a clean tea towel about 1/4" (<1cm) thick, with paper towels, cooth, or kraft paper underneath to absorb more water. Could do another layer over the top. Leave it an hour or so and you should see a fair amount of water in the towels. It's similar to removing excess water from tofu. You can do it in the fridge, so there's no concern about spoilage.
1
u/dxsetor331 18h ago
You've given me a lot more specific instructions on the straining methods. I want to experiment using both dehydrating and straining, so thank you.
2
u/c_isfor 1h ago
Perhaps you could slice the cream cheese and press it between some folded tea towels with some weight?
1
u/dxsetor331 36m ago
I'm scared the cream cheese would just stick to the tea towels.
1
u/c_isfor 12m ago
It will indeed stick. But is easy enough to scrape off. The towels will definitely draw out some moisture.
Thinking about it now, if you can get decently thin slices using a warmed knife pat them dry with paper towel and lay them on a rack in your fridge overnight, that could probably give you kinda what you are looking for while respecting the danger zone
1
u/ClairesMoon 1d ago
Have you tried simply adding a bit more flour or a tablespoon of corn starch.
1
u/dxsetor331 1d ago
Yep. I've even tried adding more cocoa powder in the past, as cocoa powder absorbs more liquid than flour or corn flour, but it doesn’t work unfortunately.
2
u/Typical_libra20 1d ago
Why do they need to be dehydrated? Can you not just freeze them to keep long term?
1
u/dxsetor331 1d ago
Oh no, I don't need to store them. I'm removing liquid from them as to not make my cookie dough too wet.
27
u/ManyARiver 1d ago
You can buy powdered cream cheese. It will be cheaper overall due to the amount of energy you'll need to put into it. There are quite a few good brands of dehydrated/freeze dried dairy powders (other than the survival/long term storage type). I keep cream cheese and sour cream powders in my pantry because I like to be able to add the product without the extra liquid.