Recipe for Homemade Cream Cheese

homemade cheese making instructions and supplies

Recipes for Making Soft Cheese

We highly recommended that you start with soft cheeses. The following recipes use already ripened dairy products (yogurt) or an acid added directly to the milk in order to separate the curds and whey. These cheeses are ready to eat in is little as 1 day. Making them will demonstrate to you the separation of water and milk solids as well as introduce the basics of heating milk and draining cheese using cheesecloth.

Homemade Cream Cheese

Cream Cheese

3 cups whole milk

3 cups heavy cream

¼ tsp Mesophilic starter

¼ tsp calcium chloride

¼ rennet tablet

Whisk together the milk and cream in double boiler. Slowly warm to 72 degrees. Remove pot from heat and stir in Mesophilic-M starter.
Add calcium chloride and stir. Add rennet and stir. Cover pot and set in draft-free area at 70 - 74 degrees for 24 hours to ripen. When done it will look like yogurt.

Line colander with cheesecloth and place in basin to drain. Ladle cheese mixture into colander. Pull up ends of cheesecloth and knot them together to hang. Hang cloth over pot for draining. Let curds drain for 12 hours or until it no longer drips and is a solid mass.
Spoon into an airtight container and stir till creamy. You can add fruit or herbs to the cheese to blend the flavors in. Store up to 1 week in the refrigerator.