by Anne Davey

Created on: March 10, 2008

Cream Cheese. Even saying the name out loud makes you look fatter.

Oh the joy of spreading a good dollop of rich, thick, creamy cheese on a cracker and popping the whole thing in your mouth at once, licking your lips to pick up any errant cracker crumbs that might have spilled over as you took that first crunch!

But we are always being told to watch our saturated fat and salt intake these days and I am no longer the slip of a girl I once was so cheese generally is a bit of a no-no now. A lifetime on the hips and all that. My daily lunchtime sarnie now has ham or tuna and cucumber in it instead of cheese and pickle; my coleslaw is low fat (boring) and I never ever use butter; learning instead to live with extra-light spreads and skimmed milk. So if hard cheeses are out, cream cheese must be totally illegal. Isn't it?

One way to keep a toe-hold in the world of guilty pleasures without dying of a coronary before you reach the checkout with your lard purchase is to buy an extra-light/very low fat version of an old favourite. Philadelphia cream cheese for example, make an extra light and a fat free version which fits the bill, and the experience of eating it is not a million miles away from coping with other extra light products.

As you peel back the foil lid on your tub of Philly, you notice immediately that the rich creamy texture of the full fat version appears to be still there, but the smell is a bit different. You can't smell fat globules hurling themselves towards your nostrils. As you scoop it out of the tub, the difference in texture becomes more noticeable, it is more prone to cracking slightly and adheres to itself slightly less well.

Taste-wise it has the same mild flavour as our full fat friend. On a Ritz cracker it does give the secret nibbler a pleasurable sensation though I can't help wondering if knowing it's not that wicked has a dampening psychological effect on the joy of it in your mouth. It is not as rich and creamy as the full fat version though, it's true. But having used it for a while I'm finding my taste buds adjusting; perhaps full fat cream cheese would be horribly sickly and fatty now?

In cooking I've used low fat cream cheese to good effect to make a cheesecake. I tend to use a mixture of cream cheese, creme fraiche and double cream in cheese cake anyway as that lightens the mixture somewhat. Clearly this does not come into the category of low fat food even now, but it is more acceptable as part of a balanced diet if you make it that way,

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