You Can't Get Enough of this Creamy Grape Salad

It always amazes me when something so simple is so ridiculously good, and my Creamy Grape Salad definitely fits the description. There's nothing hard about it, and the only time-consuming part is picking all the grapes off their stems and washing them. I make this constantly in the summer, and fairly often in winter as well. I've also used the dressing as a dip for fruit.

As written, the recipe only calls for red and green seedless grapes. But I often add some black grapes for variety. The best part is you can add up to an additional pound of grapes without having to increase the dressing. See what I mean about simple, though? That's it. Grapes, sugar substitute (this time I used real sugar, whatever), sour cream, cream cheese, and vanilla.

I forgot to take a picture with the hand mixer in it, but you can't get the dressing this smooth and creamy with a spoon. I generally soften my cream cheese for quite a while before starting, so it only takes a couple of minutes to get dressing that looks like this.

Once the dressing is done, stir in the grapes and into the fridge it goes for a few hours. This particular bowl has a LOT of extra dressing, mostly because I wasn't paying attention when I bought grapes. I used a total of three pounds of grapes (one each red, green, and black) instead of four pounds because I wasn't thinking.

This batch from an earlier time I made it has five pounds of grapes (two each red and green, one of black), and you can see how the dressing really should be. It doesn't really matter... however many pounds of grapes you have, I can virtually guarantee this salad will be gone within a couple of days at most. I've been known to grab a huge bowl of it and call it dinner.

Creamy Grape Salad

Serves 12

8 ounces neufchatel cheese
1 cup light sour cream
1/3 cup sugar substitute (equal to 1/3 cup sugar)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 pounds seedless green grapes
2 pounds seedless red grapes

Step 1
In a large bowl, beat together cream cheese, sour cream, sugar substitute and vanilla until smooth.
Step 2
Add grapes and stir to completely coat.
Step 3
Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours to allow flavours to meld.

You can also add a pound of seedless black grapes for variety without needing to add more dressing, if you wish.

Serving Size: 1 (190.6 g)

Calories 197.9

Total Fat - 6.8 g

Saturated Fat - 3.8 g

Cholesterol - 58.5 mg

Sodium - 133.3 mg

Total Carbohydrate - 16.3 g

Dietary Fiber - 0.7 g

Nutrition information is figured on using sugar substitute rather than real sugar. I usually do make it that way, but my box of Splenda tricked me into thinking there was more in it than there was when I made this for photos, so I used real sugar. It's pretty close, though. Using sugar increase calories by about 20 and carbs by about 5 g (all of which is sugar, of course).