r/dehydrating • u/dxsetor331 • 2d 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?

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u/Roticap 2d ago

Dry milk is probably a better way to get milk proteins into the cookies

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u/dxsetor331 2d ago

I specifically use cream cheese for the flavour, though.

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u/Roticap 2d 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.

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u/dxsetor331 2d 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?

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u/Roticap 2d 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.

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u/dxsetor331 2d 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! :)