Taste-bud Journey: Homemade Cream Cheese made with Lemon Juice

During the pandemic, I am taking taste-bud journeys as I self-isolate rather than physical journeys. Here is my adapted recipe for making Homemade Cream Cheese made with lemon juice. It was inspired by watching Gemma's Bigger Bolder Baking video tutorial linked near the end of this blog.

Yesterday, I made the cream cheese using white vinegar. I found it on the dry side and tried to use the remainder of the mixture in recipes. Now, I will make this using lemon juice to see if I personally find the taste more pleasing to my taste buds. Here is what I have concluded.

Conclusion: To my taste buds, the mixture tasted only slightly better made with lemon juice as opposed to white vinegar. Either way, it had a kind of grainy, dry aftertaste that was not altogether pleasant. I did stir in a few teaspoons of whey which helped a little to smooth the dryness out. But my final conclusion is that I will only use this cream cheese as one of the ingredients in a recipe rather than give it a starring role. Sad to say, I much prefer the store-bought version of cream cheese than homemade. Oh, well! It was an interesting experiment, in any case.

 

Recipe

• 4 cups of whole milk or 8 oz. powdered whole milk added to 4 cups of water
• 2 to 3 tablespoons of lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon of fine sea salt

Procedure

• Step 1: Pour 4 cups of milk in large cooking pot and bring to a slow boil over the course of 12 to 15 minutes. Stir occasionally.

• Step 2: Once the milk is slowly boiling, lower the heat and add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and stir. Wait one minute before adding a second tablespoon. Only add a third tablespoon of you don't see evidence of curds totally separated from the green-colored whey. I did use all three tablespoons as the curd seemed to be slower to form than when I used white vinegar the day before.

• Step 3: Remove the mixture from the heat. Strain the mixture in either cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer. This will totally separate the curd from the whey. Allow this to drain for 15 minutes.

• Step 4: Spoon the curds into a food processor along with 1/4 teaspoon of fine sea salt. Blend until smooth. If the curds appear to be grainy rather than smooth, you could optionally add a teaspoon of the whey into that mixture. In my case, I ended up stirring in several teaspoons of this mixture, taste-testing it each time.

• Step 5: Transfer the up to 8 ounces of cream cheese into a container and store in the refrigerator for 7 to 10 days. My mixture probably only yielded 6 ounces.

In case you're interested, my blog post for the homemade wheat bread recipe plus the two 'kitchen toys' used to make cream cheese will each open in a new window.

• Taste-bud Journey: Homemade Cream Cheese made with White Vinegar


• Ninja Food Chopper Express Chop with 200-Watt, 16-Ounce Bowl for Mincing, Chopping, Grinding, Blending and Meal Prep (NJ110GR)


• Nut Milk & Greek Yogurt Maker - Reusable & Durable Nut Milk Bag Alternative - Fine Mesh Stainless Steel - Soy/Oat/Almond Milk - All Purpose Food Strainer - (1 Quart Yogurt, 1.5 Quart Nut Milk)

RECIPE SOURCE: Gemma from Bigger Bolder Baking. Her tutorial video below will open in a new window.

Cooking Sites that have inspired me:

• Gemma's Bigger Bolding Baking website that includes over 100 great cooking videos.

• All Recipes Website that includes all kinds of sweet and savory recipes.

Books written by Debbie Dunn:

Here is the Amazon Link to all anti-bullying curriculum books plus all children’s books written by Debbie Dunn (both paperback and Kindle). It will open up in a new window.

• Author’s Page on Amazon.com