Chocolate Cream Cheese & Mini Chocolate Cherry Bread Recipes

Give your morning or afternoon bagel a boost with this dreamy fat-free chocolate cream cheese recipe. Adore chocolate desserts, but need a change of pace? Try making these mini chocolate cherry breads, which you bake in soup cans.

Go for the gold and top a piece of the cherry bread with the chocolate cream cheese. These recipes are delightfully easy to make and will impress any chocolate addict.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Spread - (Eight 2-tablespoon servings)

You can use any vanilla extract you choose in this chocolate cream cheese recipe. However, utilizing a "good" vanilla extract, like Madagascar vanilla, definitely puts some zing in the spread. Purchase Madagascar vanilla at TopVanilla.com.

1 - Ingredients You Will Need

8 ounces fat-free cream cheese

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1-teaspoon vanilla extract

½-teaspoon almond extract

2- Directions

In a mixing bowl, whip cream cheese with electric beater until smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients and whip again just until blended. For an added treat, toss in some freshly shaved coconut or strawberries cut in small pieces. This yummy fat-free spread has 47 calories a serving, which is two tablespoons.

Mini Chocolate Cherry Bread - Makes Five Breads

1 - Ingredients You Will Need

2/3 cup margarine (can use substitute)

½-cup sugar (can use substitute)

1-teaspoon vanilla (Madagascar if possible)

2 eggs (can use egg substitute)

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 ½-cup all-purpose flour (sifted)

½-teaspoon salt

1-teaspoon baking soda

¾-cup buttermilk

1 ¼-cup cherries (pitted/chopped) fresh is best/can use dried

5 clean and greased soup cans (open on one end only)

Baking Sheet

2 - Directions

Preheat oven to 350

In a mixing bowl, cream the margarine and sugar using an electric beater. Add eggs and beat well. Stir in vanilla; sift together the flour, salt, cocoa and baking soda and alternately add to creamed ingredients with the buttermilk. Gently stir in cherries.

Fill the five (greased) soup cans with batter and place on a baking sheet. Bake the breads in (preheated) oven for 30 minutes, or until chocolate cherry bread is done. Test doneness with toothpick. Cool mini breads 20-30 minutes on wire rack before turning out. Mini breads can be wrapped and frozen.

Sources: TopVanilla.com - "The Passionate Palate" cookbook - Personal Experience