You know it’s a special occasion when there’s cheese on the table. In most Filipino homes, cheese only makes an appearance when there’s something to celebrate—which is why cheesy pastas, macaroni salads, and anything with a cheese pull show up at Noche Buena. Cheese is shorthand for sosyal.
If you want something just as festive with half the effort, there’s an easier, less-trodden path than making yet another pasta. (And do you really want to make what everyone else is making?)
For something truly low-effort, high-reward, consider the cheese dip.
Because what is cheese dip if not fancy, festive sawsawan? Creamy, tangy, extra luxurious, all while tapping into the same instinct that makes us reach for toyomansi and spiced suka. Assemble with crackers, bread, fruit, and nuts… or go full Filipino with lumpia, toasted pandesal, and banana chips.
A great cheese dip needs great cheese. Arla Cream Cheese balances richness with a light, natural taste. It whips into silky spreads and melts into creamy dips without hours of prep, making it your true holiday secret.
Arla Cheese is made with 100% real natural ingredients—strictly no additives, colorants, and preservatives. This gives their products a rich and distinctly fresh taste at an affordable price. You’ll immediately taste the difference in your pastas, sandwiches, and dips!
Here are three Christmas-ready cheese dips that are as main event-worthy as lechon.
We made this recipe on Simpol’s vlog as a dip for lumpiang Shanghai. This sauce is like a richer, more grown-up garlic shawarma sauce, with Arla Cream Cheese forming a tangy base. Minced garlic and all-natural Gouda form the dip’s savory, cheesy core. Use it for dipping, dunking, or rescuing anything that feels under-cheesed on the Christmas table.
Cook garlic: Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add minced garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until soft and fragrant, about 2–3 minutes. Do not brown.
Add flour and milk: Add flour. Whisk constantly until incorporated into the garlic-butter mixture, about 1–2 minutes. Continue whisking while you slowly add the milk.
Add cheese: Once the milk starts to boil, add the Arla cream cheese and Arla Gouda into the pan. Whisk to melt the cheeses into the sauce. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue gently cooking the sauce, whisking occasionally to prevent scalding the bottom, until the sauce reaches your desired consistency.
If the sauce is too thick, thin it out with milk. If the sauce is too thin, you can thicken it with a quick roux (a paste of flour and fat). Melt 1 tbsp butter in a microwave, then stir in 1 tbsp flour until smooth. Whisk this paste into the sauce until dissolved, then let it cook for a couple of minutes to thicken. Take note that the sauce will get even thicker as it cools.
Season and serve: Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to a dip bowl and serve warm.
A fluffier, spread-on-anything version of the Cheesy Garlic Sauce. Still made with Arla Cream Cheese, but now with roasted garlic for a rich, mellow sweetness. It’s the only thing you have to cook, and you can make it days (or a week!) in advance. For freshness, toss some minced soft herbs to the dip: thyme or rosemary, parsley, dill, whatever’s on hand. Serve with crackers, toasted bread, or sturdy potato chips.
Preheat oven: Preheat oven or air fryer to 400°F.
Prepare garlic: Chop off the top third of each head of garlic, revealing the cloves inside. You want to see a cross-section of all the cloves, save for the smallest ones around the side.
Place chopped garlic heads in a small baking dish. Drizzle each garlic head generously with 1–2 tsp olive oil each, getting it to seep over and in between the exposed cloves. Season with salt and pepper. Cover baking dish with a sheet of foil.
Roast garlic: Transfer baking dish to the oven or air fryer and roast until garlic is very soft and golden in color, about 1 to 1 ½ hours. You’ll know it’s almost done when your kitchen starts to smell like sweet garlic. Remove from oven, uncover, and let cool slightly.
Make dip: Squeeze roasted garlic cloves into the bowl of a food processor. Add Arla cream cheese, grated Arla Gouda, and chopped thyme. Blend until well combined. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Serve: Transfer dip to a small serving bowl. Use the back of a spoon to make an indent at the center of the dip. Drizzle with olive oil (or any remaining roasted garlic oil from the baking dish) and garnish with extra thyme.
This non-recipe comes from Ralph Sy and Charlene Ng of Scratch, the Makati-based bakery known for their crowd-drawing weekend brunch and chic party spreads.
This beginner-friendly spread is as simple as it gets, starting at the center: whipped Arla Cream Cheese seasoned with salt and pepper. That’s it.
But once you surround it with dinner rolls, roasted grapes, candied bacon, and caramelized walnuts in a circle—a wreath!—it suddenly becomes a Noche Buena star. It’s also endlessly riffable: use pandesal instead of dinner rolls, add some Christmas bacon, tuck in more cheese slices (Arla Emmental and Havarti are nice). If it sounds good with cream cheese, wreath it!
Prepare for baking: Preheat oven to 350°F.
Make roasted grapes: Using kitchen shears, cut grape stems into small clusters. Arrange in a single layer in a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Drizzle generously with olive oil, then season with a quick dressing of white wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. Use your hands to gently toss the grapes, coating the fruit evenly with oil.
Bake grapes for 20–25 minutes, or until collapsed and wrinkled. Set aside to cool until ready to serve.
Save the roasted grape juice in the pan! Cook it down over the stovetop until reduced into a kind of syrup. Let cool and save for assembly.
Make candied bacon: Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set a metal rack on top. Arrange bacon slices in a single layer on the metal rack. Sprinkle brown sugar over the bacon—you want about 1 tsp brown sugar over each strip. Bake until sugar is melted and forms a coating around the bacon, about 20–25 minutes. Let cool before chopping into small, bite-sized pieces.
Make caramelized walnuts: Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Combine sugar and water in a wide, deep pan over medium heat. Let sugar crystals melt completely without stirring; tilt and shake the pan as needed instead. Once you have a golden syrup, continue cooking until it darkens slightly into an amber color.
Quickly and carefully add the walnuts to the pan. Use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to evenly coat the nuts in the syrup. Once fully coated, pour nuts into the lined baking sheet. Spread out into a single even layer. Let cool and harden completely. Chop into small, bite-sized pieces.
Prepare cream cheese: Add Arla cream cheese to a mixing bowl. Using a balloon whisk or a hand mixer, whisk the cream cheese until fluffy. Season with salt and pepper, whisking one last time until incorporated.
Assemble wreath: Position a small plate at the center of the biggest serving plate you can find. Plop whipped cream cheese at the center of the small plate, and use a spoon to spread and swirl the cheese towards the edges of the plate.
Arrange dinner rolls in a circle around the cream cheese. Form a second ring of dinner rolls around the first ring. Scatter chopped caramelized walnuts in the gap between the two dinner rolls, forming a circle of nuts in between the bread. Repeat with the chopped candied bacon, going over the nuts.
Add roasted grapes all around the wreath, with some pieces overlapping slightly over the cream cheese. If using roasted grape syrup, drizzle over the cream cheese in a spiral. Finish with thyme sprigs for pops of green. Take pictures. Serve with rolled Arla Gouda or Havarti Cheese Slices.
You can make the roasted grapes and candied bacon in the oven at the same time!
