ALFREDO SAUCE WITH CREAM CHEESE

As a change to using a tomato base sauce for pasta I decided to make an Alfredo sauce.  I have lots of cream cheese in the house due to buying two containers of lower fat cream cheese at Costco.  The cream cheese is packaged at Costco so that you have to buy two containers.  I had bought some multi coloured Italian dry pasta and I was curious to see how it would taste.  The pasta shape was good for sauces as it has ridges and indentations which will help bind the sauce to the cooked pasta.  The sauce was not heavy and I used less butter and cream cheese than what usual recipes would call for.

Sauce cooking on the stove.

Pasta draining in the colander.

Ready to serve.

Cook 3 cups of dry pasta according to the directions on the pasta packaging.  Drain.

Alfredo Sauce with Cream Cheese

INGREDIENTS:

2 tbsp butter

3 - 4 tbsp cream cheese (light)

1 tsp garlic powder

1 cup milk

¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

ground black pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

Melt butter in a medium, non-stick saucepan over medium heat.  Add cream cheese and garlic powder, stirring with wire whisk until smooth.  Add milk, a little at a time, whisking to smooth out lumps.  Stir in Parmesan and pepper.  Remove from heat when sauce reaches desired consistency.  Sauce will thicken and you can thin it with milk if it becomes too thick.  Toss with hot pasta to serve.

Modified from allrecipes.com