Well, I gave cottage cheese a try with this recipe:
https://cheesemaking.com/products/cottage-cheese-recipe-dry-curdThere were a few problems. The first was my apartment was 30 C, which is waaay to warm :-) I planned to start the curd at noon and let it develop until morning. At 11:00 PM, it was just separating from the sides of the pot and it had a little bit of whey on top. :-( I didn't want to make cheese in the middle of the night, so I thought I'll see how it goes.
By morning, the curd had collapsed to the bottom of the bot and there was a good layer of whitish whey on top. The curd was also no longer smooth. So I guess it over acidified. Makes sense. When I cut the curd it was *very* firm and I thought it will be super easy to dry it out. Alas, no. After a couple of stirs it just started shattering/crumbling. From that point on it was a struggle to dry out the curd while not having it disintegrate completely. I did my best, but ultimately I was never able to dry out the curd enough.
I now have a nice cream cheese :-) Oh well. I'll try again soon with better planning. I only used a litre of milk as I new this was going to take me a couple of tries to get right.
Edit: On a whim, I decided to give the cheese its cold water bath and see if I can salvage it as a cottage cheese. You know what? It worked. It's actually pretty nice. Very soft and creamy, but not unlike cottage cheese I've had before. I'm calling this a late success ;-) I'm going to give it a try again, though. Next time I'll prepare everything before going to bed so that I'll have a flexible timeline the next day.
