Cream Cheese

[feather]

I want to make cream cheese for cheese cake.

When I made cream cheese from whole milk, it wasn't as rich as the cream cheese I'm accustomed to, the stuff I buy.

So I doodled around, and cream cheese has 155 g of fat per lb. Whole milk only has 133 128 g of fat per lb gallon. So doing calculations it turns out that to make cream cheese I'd have to add 1/4 cup of cream to each gallon of whole milk.

Does that sound about right? (correction made)
Usually for me, a gallon of milk makes more or less a lb of cheese.

[cheesehead94]

When I make cream cheese I always put equal parts whole milk and cream. No matter what though it is probably going to differ substantially from store bought cream cheese. I think it is better, but it will probably perform differently in baking uses than the store bought kind

[River Bottom Farm]

Sounds about right. I made cream cheese with straight cream a few times And it is really good too but when making cheese cake you have to keep it chilled (not room temp) or it will make butter during the cake process...still really tasty but not the same

[feather]

Thank you both for your replies.

I couldn't decide on the perfect ratio of milk to heavy whipping cream, so I just winged it. I just wanted to start somewhere and then decide after that about my milk to cream ratio.

2 gallons whole milk P&H with 2 quarts of heavy whipping cream PnoH.
1/2 tsp calcium chloride solution
1/8th tsp meso MA dry culture
4 drops of triple acting veg rennet in distilled water

Fermented for 18 hours, drained and drained hanging for 24 hours.

It is very rich (probably don't need so much cream next time), thick and holds its own shape, tangy, no graininess, very smooth. I'm really happy with it.
This recipe made just over 7 lbs of cream cheese.