How to Make Cream Cheese

Make your own quick and easy cream cheese with just two ingredients. Create tasty variations by adding fresh herbs, garlic, spring onions or wild herbs like nettles, sorrel or dandelion.

Cream Cheese is one of those things that I will probably never buy in a shop again since we started making our own.

It’s so easy to make and very tasty.

All you need is one liter of full fat milk, the juice of a lemon, some salt and a few herbs from the garden (we chose chives). You could also use garlic powder or leave it plain with just salt.

5 Easy Steps to Making Cream Cheese

Step 1

Heat the milk in a pot but don’t bring it to the boil.

Step 2

Once it is hot take the milk off the heat and pour in the lemon juice while slowly stirring the milk with a wooden spoon. Leave it to stand for a few minutes. You can watch the milk curdle and separate from the whey.

Step 3

Pour the curdled milk into a sieve covered with a clean dish towel (and a pot underneath to catch the whey).

Step 4

While the whey is dripping through the sieve you can prepare your herbs. The first time we washed and chopped a handful of chives. Another time we used spring onions to add flavour to our homemade cream cheese.

Step 5

If you get too impatient to wait for the last bit of whey to drip through (like me) you can squeeze it a little. But don’t squeeze out all the liquid or the cheese will come out too dry.

Now you should be left with something like this:

You can add sea salt, pepper and your herbs or just leave it plain.

What can I do with all the leftover whey?

It’s packed with protein so it would be a pity to throw it out. Maybe you want to drink it or use it for other recipes like a rich vegetable stock or instead of water when baking bread.

Let me know how it goes for you if you try this recipe!

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