CURRENTLY SERVING:

Cream cheese and Philadelphia go pudgy hand in pudgy hand, right? Actually according to Kraft Foods’ website, the first cream cheese was made in New York in 1872 by a genius dairyman/glutton named William Lawrence (Never trust a man with two first names unless he makes cream cheese.) It was branded Philadelphia Cream Cheese because we were supposedly the the “home of top quality food” at the time. Damn Straight. Anyway, it’s not that difficult to make your own cream cheese and we’re gonna teach you how:

1. It’s all about cultured milk or yogurt. Cultured milk has milk bacteria in it. It sounds gross but these cultures act to convert the milk sugars into lactic acid which gives cream cheese that familiar tart flavor. Yogurt is also perfect for this as most yogurts teem with live cultures. Grab some Stoneyfeild Organic Plain or Brown Cow Plain from your local yuppie grocer and you’re good.

2. From here, it’s all about separating the cultured milk or yogurt from the whey within. You’re going to need a cheese cloth or clean towel, a strainer, and a bowl. Place the cheese cloth or towel in the strainer, place the strainer over the bowl and spoon the yogurt or cultured milk onto the cloth.

3. Top it all off with some plastic wrap to keep out unwanted yuckies and let gravity do the rest. The whole contraption will need to sit at room temperature for the better part of 5 hours.

What remains within the cloth will be your cream cheese. Get it into a glass container and refrigerate. From here you can really go crazy and make your own flavored cream cheese. Add fresh fruit or jellies, or onion and chives, or even cocoa and brown sugar for chocolate cream cheese. Go to town Philadelphia, the world is your bagel! And let us know in the comments if you go ahead and do this. We swear you won’t die (not a legally binding promise).