Fruit Dips

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When I was growing up, there were no such things as fruit dips, let me tell you.  (Maybe there were, but we did not move in Fruit Dip circles.  Harrumph.)

However, the other day, junior brought home lunch, and part of the ensemble, as we would say in France if we ever get to go there, was a little bowl of fruit, and an even littler bowl of dip.  (It really was rather good.)  Of course, I had to get on the Internet and look for fruit dip recipes.  Goodness; I never came across such a lot of silly recipes in my life.

Recipes can be pretty tricky.  Some of them are such that if you depart from the recipe the slightest bit, the whole thing goes for a six, as we say in Cricket country.  Others will come out ok, and taste reasonable even if you take lots of liberties with the recipe.  Some recipes are very sensitive to the proportions and amounts of the ingredients; others are sensitive to the preparation method, and some are sensitive to both.  This phenomenon is called stability in mathematics; if small changes do not make a huge difference, the recipe is stable.  If a small variation makes a huge difference, it is an unstable recipe.  (The word stable can also be used to describe whether, once the food is prepared, it goes bad quickly; that's not how I'm using it here.)

Fruit Dip, as you can imagine, is among the most stable of things you can make.  Here is one suggestion:

Mix together some
**Sour Cream -- any amount.
Blend in some
**Softened cream cheese, e.g. Philly Cream Cheese.  Any amount, as long as you don't get the mixture too stiff, and it isn't more than the sour cream.  Less than a quarter of the amount of sour cream sounds like a good rule.
Add a little sweetener, such as
**Sugar (possibly brown sugar), or some artificial sweetener, according to taste.  Don't make it too sweet; remember you're eating it with fruit.  A teaspoonful of sugar per cup would be plenty; you should get away with a lot less.
Add a dash of
**Salt.  I hate myself for suggesting this, but there's salt in everything these days, and a tiny bit of salt in a dip can hardly be faulted.  But JUST A DASH, mind.
Add a dash of
**Vanilla essence.  A quarter teaspoon will be plenty for a cup or more of dip.

Finally, you can add any of the following, for extra bite and flavor.  I'm suggesting less than an eighth of a teaspoonful at the very most: finely ground black pepper, finely ground cayenne pepper, finely ground nutmeg or mace, finely powdered cinnamon, lemon or lime, or a tiny bit of frozen orange juice, e.g. a tablespoonful.