John's Cheese #055 - Chocolate American Neufchâtel #1

[Cheese Head]

A couple of other members have posted about using chocolate in or making cheese with chocolate flavoured milk so here I go!

Chocolate flavoured American Style Neufchâtel cheese based on the recipe posted here but with using chocolate flavoured cow's milk.

RECORDS

• Jan 10, 2010
• 2:00PM: Bought 1 US gallon/3.8 liters of "fresh" store bought pasteurized homogenized skim chocolate flavoured cow's milk for USD3.19 and placed on counter to warm to room temperature.
• 3:45PM: Poured milk into heavy bottomed stockpot on smallest ring of stove, measured temp at 50 °F/10 °C.
• 4:00PM: As milk pasteurized, to standardize, trickled and whisked in 1/4 teaspoon diluted CaCl2. Weighed ~0.35 grams of Danisco's Choozit Brand Mesophilic Starter Culture MM100 onto mini digital scale, tapped off onto top of milk, whisked in. Warmed with gas ring to accidentally too high ~29 °C/84 °F room temp.
• 4:20PM: Poured ~0.125 grams CHR Hansen Powdered Rennet onto mini digital scale, tapped off into 1/4 cup water, stirred to dilute, trickled onto milk and stirred for 1 minute. Covered and set aside for culture to ripen overnight.
• 6:00PM: Checked with finger, nice very very soft gelled curd, covered and set aside for culture to ripen overnight.
• Jan 11, 2010
• 4:20AM: Checked, 70 °F/21 °C, nice lactic acid curd forming, curd has shrunk away from walls of stockpot with layer of whey being expelled around circumference, top and probably bottom. Covered and set aside for culture to ripen further.
• 5:10PM: Measured temp at 71 °F/21.4 °C & pH of whey on uncalibrated meter at 4.05. Ladled curds into draining bag from DairyConnection.com and hung from camera tripod above same stockpot. Curd shattered easily and whey drainage was rapid where broke the soft curd.
• 9:20PM: Scraped de-wheyed curds off side of bag with spatula to allow moister curds to drain faster. Had taste off spatula, combination chocolate and cream cheese, but very sweet.
• Jan 12, 2010
• 5:30AM: Turned bag inside out into plastic container, pushed cheese down to fit, tasted, still chocolate flavoured cream cheese, still sweet but not quite as sweet. Placed lid on container and container in fridge to mature. Rinsed bag, no brown stain.
• 6:00PM: Took pictures of final product cold, very stiff-viscous, taste is chocolate - cream cheese, chocolate is not overpowered, sweet but not too sweet, nice desert cheese for on desert in cake or as part of cake icing.
• Feb 28, 2010
• 8:00AM: My family is not big on cheese and thus it's been mostly me eating this batch, and I'm not keen on chocolate milk, so I've been slow and it got lost at the back of the household kitchen fridge. Had some last weekend and was still good, went to use some today, white>blue mold starting on one quarter of surface! Understandable at 49 days age, remainder went down the drain.

NOTES

• Next time, place in draining bag after lactic curd has formed to get longer time draining for thicker cheese.

[Cheese Head]

Pictures #2 . . .

[Cheese Head]

Pictures #3 . . .

[driekus]

Im in suspense here......
Did you get a good clean break?
Looking forward to more photos

[Cheese Head]

Hi driekus, now I remember, it was you proposing using chocolate in a different thread.

I only used a small amount of rennet as this is more a lactic acid coagulated cheese than a rennet coagulated, thus I was not expecting or wanted a clean break. The long time between adding mesophilic starter culture and hanging is to enable the lactic bacteria to multiply and the pH to drop to around 4.6-4.7 to get a curd after which I will break the curd by ladling into a draining bag (which will probably get stained brown ).

I'm not sure of the effect of having all that corn syrup and sugar will be, or the resultant cheese's taste given all those ingredients in the milk!

[MrsKK]

Okay, John, so maybe I will have to try this with raw cow's milk, just to give a comparison in results.

Give me until later in the week, though, as I worked night's this weekend.  I think that I would just use cocoa powder and some sugar, though, rather than actual chocolate, which would have to be melted.  I'll have to think about it a bit.

[Tom Turophile]

Not a bad idea -- growing up, I loved chocolate cream cheese (from Hickory Farms IIRC).

[GBoyd]

I have to admit that I'm a little grossed out by the idea. But you never know how tastes will come together, so maybe it will be good.

Hope it turns out well.

[Cheese Head]

Strawberry and banana flavored milk next . . . all the childhood flavors !

Seriously though, I should have checked the pH after 12 hours this morning as it may have been ready for the draining bag then. The outside of the curd was stiffer but the inside shattered easily when ladled and gave off whey rapidly as visible in the pictures above.

[Brie]

You go guy--banana splits!

[Cheese Head]

Updated records & pictures above, taste after draining overnight was stronger choc flavored cream cheese, and slightly less sweet than before draining. Texture was slightly grainy (not obvious in picture above).

[DeejayDebi]

Kind of resembles soft icecream doesn't it?

[Cheese Head]

Yep like ice cream or cream cheese . Just added final two pictures, in the last one you can see the fine grainy texture, but texture in mouth is smooth.

[Sailor Con Queso]

Looks fabulous John. Sounds like the perfect party cheese.

[DeejayDebi]

That looks really neat! Chocolate canoli? Fruit dip? Bet that'd be great on strawberries! Chocolate cheese cake?