My first attempt at making mascarpone cheese was a fail. It took me a while to decide to try it again. I also had to make sure I had enough time to finish making it.
It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be! I’m not sure what I did wrong the first time I tried this.
I found a general recipe at Cheesemaking.com to reference. All I had to work with was whole milk and ultra-pasteurized heavy whipping cream, so that is the recipe I used.
1 pint of heavy whipping cream
1 pint of whole milk
1/4 tsp of tartaric acid
In this pic, the milk/cream mixture is about 180 degrees F. This part didn’t take long. Maybe 15 minutes.
As soon as I added the tartaric acid, the mixture started curdling. The description of the mixture in the recipe as looking like cream of wheat is quite accurate.
The curds were very small. Much smaller than when I make ricotta.
This is the mixture after 20 minutes of cooling in the bowl.
I’m out of cheesecloth so I had to use a paper towel instead to line my colander. It worked pretty well.
Here is the cheese after an hour of draining in the fridge. I think it is a little bit grainer-looking than it is supposed to be. The interesting thing is that it didn’t feel grainy when I tasted it. I am hoping that it will smooth out overnight. We will see. If it doesn’t smooth out, it can probably still be used in a savory dish. If it does smooth out, I would like to use it to make tiramisu.
I had about 1 and 1/3 cups of whey left from draining the cheese. I used the whey to make potato bread.
I would like to try making mascarpone cheese using unpasteurized heavy cream but it is so expensive that I doubt I ever will!
-Lynn
I’ve only ever made paneer but have been curious about some of the other cheeses people make at home with minimal special equipment. Mascarpone/cream cheese has never been on my radar, I have to admit. I do have a couple of questions.
Is tartaric acid the same as cream of tartar?
What’s your yield from 2 pints of milk/cream?
Tartaric acid is different from cream of tartar. I ordered my tartaric acid from a cheesemaking company. I’ve read a few other blogs about mascarpone though and they used lemon juice! I might try that the next time. My yield was about 1 pint of cheese. I probably should have let it drain longer though.
About how many cups/oz is that?
2 cups or 16 ounces. The recipe said I would have about 10 – 13 ounces yield mascarpone with about 1 pint of whey. So I probably should have let mine drain longer.