While it’s easy to think of it primarily as a luxurious complement to other foods, cream cheese is actually a suprisingly crucial component within the vast culinary canon. Aside from being a boon to bagels, cream cheese is essential in a wide variety of baked goods, soups, sauces, and so much more—which it makes it all the more challenging to work with if you have a lactose-free diet. That’s where Trader Joe’s Lactose Free Cream Cheese comes in. Made with lactase, the enzyme that naturally breaks down lactose, it has all the same delicately tart flavor and superb spreadability you’d expect from a Cream Cheese, and absolutely none of the lactose.

Just like its lactose-containing cousins, Trader Joe’s Lactose Free Cream Cheese can be used in a plethora of rich, delicious recipes, from fantastically full-flavored appetizer dips to consummately creamy chowders, to sweet and fluffy frostings for carrot cake, brownies, or homemade whoopie pies. It adds body and a nice depth of flavor when mixed into a baked macaroni and cheese or casserole, it makes for a marvelous Lactose Free cheesecake, and a spoonful will even elevate a simple pan of scrambled eggs. And, of course, it’s also quite delicious as a topping for a bagel, especially when paired with a bit of our Wild Sockeye Smoked Salmon.