Hope everyone had a great 4th! It's a hot one here where I live so I whipped up a beautiful cool patriotic treat and just wanted to show you. I got the recipe from taste of home website and thought I would make it as healthy as I could so here's the recipe:
Ingredients
Ingredients
- 2 packages (8 ounces each) organic cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 cup organic sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- 2 cups raw (unpasteurized) heavy cream, whipped
- 2 quarts organic strawberries, halved, divided
- 2 quarts organic blueberries, divided
- In a large bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar and extracts until fluffy. Fold in whipped cream. Place a third of the mixture in a 4-qt. bowl. Reserve 20 strawberry halves and 1/2 cup blueberries for garnish.
- Layer half of the remaining strawberries and blueberries over cream mixture. Top with another third of the cream mixture and the remaining berries. Spread the remaining cream mixture on top. Use the reserved strawberries and blueberries to make a "flag" on top. Yield: 18 servings.
- If you do not have access to good ole raw heavy cream from a local farmer then you can use any heavy store bought cream. My biggest objection to store bought cream is that most of them are UHT (Ultra High Temp.) pasteurized meaning that the protein in the milk has been damaged due to high heat. Pasteurization doesn't kill all bacteria in milk, just enough so that you don't get a disease from all those sick cows in the confined lots given antibiotics to stay alive (sad). UHT, on the other hand, kills everything and destroys some of the vitamin content and UHT milk can sit out for 6 months without spoiling - hint - there's nothing alive in it to spoil. For more about UHT see this website from Food Renegade and if anyone can find non UHT heavy cream in the store, please let me know: http://www.foodrenegade.com/just-say-no-to-uht-milk/
