Cream Cheese Powder Delivers Versatile Applications for Food Manufacturers
Dairy Ingredients, Industry Trends, Ingredient Trends
Cream cheese is one of the most flexible ingredients around, bringing an iconic flavor to every meal.
Cream Cheese Powder Delivers Versatile Applications for Food Manufacturers
They say cream cheese was invented by accident in 1583. Today, it’s a staple of breakfast and dessert with countless flavor variations, from chive to strawberry.
Nearly 250 million Americans enjoyed cream cheese in 2020, and that number is only set to increase over the next few years.
Cream cheese was invented in New York in 1872. Why the association with Philadelphia? When cream cheese hit the market more than a century ago, manufacturers wanted consumers to associate the product with the fertile fields and dairy farming that surrounded the city. Cream cheese started as something of a delicacy, a creamy and luxurious ingredient served in upscale restaurants. Then, in the 1920s its price dropped, leading it to become a household staple (or schmear).
In fact, in 1929, a New York deli owner entered his cheesecake using cream cheese into the World’s Fair and won, solidifying its use in cheesecakes moving forward. Today, you can find cream cheese used in sushi as well as topping the most delicious slices of carrot cake.
The Crème de la Crème of Cream Cheese Powder
Despite these varied applications, the Food and Drug Administration has strict regulations on what qualifies as cream cheese. The finished product must contain 33 percent milkfat with an exact moisture content of 55 percent. This very specific formulation creates the ideal texture and flavor desired for cream cheese.
Those stringent specifications have refined consumers’ pallets – they know what cream cheese is supposed to taste like and will accept no substitutions.
Bluegrass Ingredients carries this high standard into its cream cheese powder. It’s made from the company’s supply of farm-fresh milk, resulting in new products and applications that offer increased shelf life and easier handling than traditional cream cheese.
Cream Cheese Powder Offers Versatile Applications
Cream cheese powder is one of the most adaptable cheese powders, with uses in each culinary category: breakfast items like omelettes and quiches, snacks such as popcorn and pretzels, dips, sauces and soups, dishes like stroganoff or cream-based noodles, sandwiches and desserts including fondue, cheesecakes, frostings, muffin and cake mixes.
Bluegrass’ refined cream cheese powder formulation makes it easy to tailor the taste to consumer preferences through the application process, mixing with water for a more traditional taste and texture or experimenting with lime juice or fruit puree for a sweeter application. Bluegrass’ R&D team is on hand to prototype and refine formulations to meet customer needs and flavor goals through flavor testing and color matching.
Just One of Many Innovative Cheese Powders
Bluegrass Ingredients knows dairy. Offering the iconic cream cheese flavor in a cream cheese powder and organic cream cheese powder, Bluegrass offers diverse and complex flavors to be used in a wide range of snacks, dips, and sauces. Looking toward 2021, Bluegrass anticipated many emerging cheese powder trends and dedicated powers and products to address them. With more than two dozen cheese powder flavors and formulations,
Bluegrass offers a wide variety of applications that can be included in classic combinations or in bold, adventurous new products to meet exact specifications for flavor, texture and color.
Bluegrass’ Agile Ingredient Innovation process creates opportunity for collaboration and bold new ideas at every step in the food manufacturing process. As food manufacturers navigate trends around cheese products due to coronavirus and evolving consumer preferences, Bluegrass can serve as a research and development partner in concepting, developing and ultimately delivering the innovative cheese flavors and products that customers want.
