Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: you’re heading out for ladies’ night tonight, and you offered to bring a snack. You’re looking for something healthy that won’t break the bank. If this sounds like you, then let this healthy cheesecake dip answer your prayers. I originally planned to follow this recipe from Celebrating Sweets to a T–until I got to the store.
I decided to see if I could save some money by swapping out some ingredients, or leaving some out entirely. Ultimately I was successful, and created a delicious cheesecake dip that rang in under ten dollars. So, while you may not be able to match the ambience of the Cheesecake Factory with this dip, your wallet won’t be able to tell the difference.
Healthy Chocolate Cheesecake Dip
Ingredients
Instructions
Add 4 ounces of reduced-fat cream cheese to a medium mixing bowl.
Using a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth.
Add 2/3 cup of Greek yogurt to the blended cream cheese. Blend the yogurt in with the cream cheese.
Add 2 tablespoons of pudding mix to the yogurt and cream cheese mixture.
Blend all three ingredients together until the mixture is smooth and uniform. Feel free to taste and add in more of certain ingredients as needed.
If you want, sprinkle in chocolate chips for crunch, and chop some fruit for dipping. Then, enjoy!
Saving money on this recipe was much easier than one would think. For example, store brands are your friends! Target, where I bought all of the ingredients used in the recipe, has their own brand of products that is just as good as any organic product on the market.
Also, buying in bulk can be beneficial. I bought a large container of vanilla Greek yogurt, rather than smaller cups of plain Greek yogurt. The larger tub, while the flavor isn’t the same as the yogurt from the original recipe, ended up being much cheaper. But, what saved me the most money was swapping pudding mix for cocoa powder. The pudding mix was more than two dollars cheaper, and I ended up using the same amount I would have in the recipe had I used cocoa powder.
The pudding mix also kept me from having to add in additional sugars, like the original recipe suggested, and gave the finished product a thicker texture and a fuller flavor profile. In my mind, adding less sugar to a recipe already full of healthy things like protein-packed Greek yogurt is a definite win!
Here’s my receipt from Target (with my personal card information and location blacked out). My recipe used all of the ingredients listed except for the blueberries and one package of strawberries–those are snacks for another time! The total cost of this cheesecake dip before my five percent store discount is $8.66.
A treat low on artificial sugars that’s cheaper than a date at the Cheesecake Factory? You can forward your thanks to me later.