I can’t make cream cheese from raw milk. Or maybe I should say: I’ve made cream cheese a couple different times, both the Swiss and the French methods, and it didn’t work. Since raw milk is non homogenized, the residual milk separates from the cream while it’s rennetizing and then the cream cheese ends up with little flecks of white milk cheese in it. It’s not bad, but it’s not as creamy and smooth as I want it to be. 

But then I learned to make mascarpone which is just drained crème fraîche (YouTube video out today!), and the results were similar to cream cheese, but softer and richer, more like a cultured creamy butter.

The first time I made it, I cultured it for about fourteen hours and then strained it for about five, and the cheese more tangy and dry, almost like a crumbly cheese. The second time I made it, I cultured it for no more than twelve hours and drained it for about three. At room temp, the cheese was softer and creamier, though in the fridge it still set up fairly solid. (Of the two versions, this is the one I prefer. All the photos in this post are of the creamier version. If you want to see the drier version, check out the YouTube video.)

I made tiramisu with the mascarpone (recipe coming!), and then I got to thinking about cheesecake. Using mascarpone all by itself as the base for a cheesecake felt a little excessive (though I haven’t actually tried it, so I could be wrong), and most recipes that called for mascarpone always used it in conjunction with cream cheese. 

And that’s when it occured to me: what if I mixed quark — that soft German cheese made from skimmed milk — with mascarpone? Would that work as a cream cheese substitute for a cheesecake? So I made a cheesecake, half quark and half mascarpone, and….

It works!

It’s still not as rich and velvety as a cheesecake made from store-bought cream cheese, but it’s much lighter and creamier than a cheesecake made from straight quark (which, to be sure, is lovely in its own right) and the closest I’ve gotten to a cream cheese equivalent to date. I just can’t settle on what to call the cheesecake. Quarkapone Cake? Mascaquark Cake? Mascaquarkapone Cake?

Mascarpone Cheese
Adapted from the instructions from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company

1 quart heavy cream
1 pack crème fraîche starter culture
1/2 – 1 teaspoon non iodized salt

Right before bed: Heat the cream to 86 degrees. Sprinkle the starter culture over the surface and let rest for 2 minutes to rehydrate. Whisk in the culture, cover with a lid, and let sit at room temperature for 12 hours.

In the morning: pour the crème fraîche (because that’s what the cream is now) into a cheesecloth, gather the edges into a bundle, and hang it for 3 hours to drain. (If you want a drier, crumblier cheese, drain for 5-6 hours.)

Transfer the cheese — it will seem more like a thin pudding at this point — into a jar, stir in some salt to taste, optional (though the addition of salt will give the cheese a longer shelf life), and store in the fridge for 1-3 weeks.

To make a Mascaquarkapone Cake: follow this recipe, but in place of the cream cheese use 1 pound of mascarpone and 1 pound of quark.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (8.9.21), black pepper tofu and eggplant, gazpacho, Mondays, a week of outfits, Murch mania 2017, best banana bread, elf biscuits.

That new blender I bought?

It broke! The other day when my daughter was trying to pry it up to put it away — it has some pretty intense suction-cup thingies on the bottom that make the blender really adhere to the work surface — the base broke.

The blender still works but it’s no longer secure. (When my husband looked into the issue, he discovered that other people have had this same problem.)

I told myself that if this blender breaks, then we’re getting a Vitamix, but now I’m hesitating. I really, really liked that Foodi Ninja, and Vitamix’s high price point (about the cost of a stove, practically) seems a little outrageous. Plus, the Vitamix has just a single blade so it’s basically just an ordinary blender, right? Would it really be as effective as the Foodi Ninja’s ferocious 3-blade blending?  

Since I’ve never used a Vitamix, I emailed some friends who have Vitamixes. What about making butter? I asked. (I’ve heard that the Vitamix heats up ingredients — you can make soup in it — which would be disastrous for butter.) Do you have to use the tamper while blending? Did it have a dough blade? How effective is it at processing tough stuff like nuts?

Here’s what they said:

*No idea about a dough blade. (Maybe Vitamix sells one for, like, $975.00.) 
*We have a separate container (with blade) for dry ingredients which I use to make whole wheat flour. But I think we bought that separately.
*The dry container works for nuts and other stuff. 
*It makes beautiful butter from cold cream straight from the fridge.
*I used to make smoothies all the time and I rarely even needed to tamp them down. 
*We have made pesto in it. 
*Ours bit the dust a couple times and they fixed/replaced it for free.

Hmmm, not exactly convincing, but not exactly negative, either. Just, not the rave review I was hoping for to justify a splurgy purchase. 

For years, we used a simple Oslo. (According to Amazon, we bought a replacement blender in 2019.)

While I liked the one-switch simplicity (flip up to go fast, down to go slow), and appreciated that it was durable and easy to find replacement parts, it required a lot of hands-on coddling. Plus, it needed lots of liquid to blend properly (stiff smoothies were A Real Project), had a small canister, was super loud, and the motor always smelled hot. 

Switching to the Foodi Ninja, I was blown away by its efficiency and practicality. I loved the way the 3-tiered blade chewed up the food in mere seconds. I loved how I could lift out the blade and then pour directly from the canister. I loved how the lock-on lid, the solid base, and the different settings allowed me to walk away. I even liked all the little extras (which I thought I would hate): the dough blade that I used for making butter and the second, smaller blade base and the two other canisters for smoothies, nut butters, etc. 

Yet even with all that wonderfulness, it only lasted for two months.

So now what? Do we spring for a Vitamix? Do we dig deep into the Internets in hopes of finding another, lesser known and more economical, blending beast and then take our chances? And if we do get the Vitamix, which package should we choose? There are so many options! (The benefit of buying from Costco is that we can always return something if it goes wrong….)

So I’m turning to you, friends. What kind of blender do you have? Why do you love it (or not)? Do you have a Vitamix, and is it worth the cost?

My dream is a workhorse blender than I don’t have to even think about (except to swoon over its wonderous powers) for at least a good 10 years. It might be unrealistic, but I’m still hoping.

This same time, years previous: cuajada, in the kitchen, the quotidian (8.6.18), pile it on.

I long ago gave up on ever making a crispy canned dill pickle. All canned dills, no matter what, always, always, always ended up softish. Not even the addition of a fresh grape leaf to each jar (which my mom did faithfully) much helped. The only way to get a crispy dill, I finally concluded, was via refrigerator dills. So that’s what I did — and I have a very good recipe, if I do say so myself — but I usually only make a half gallon or so at a time. Because who has space for clunky gallon jars of dills in their fridge, am I right? (I’m right.)

And then one of my friends let slip that she’d discovered The Trick to making canned crispy dills. All you do, she said, is in the evening fill your jars with cucumbers, garlic, and dill, top them off with a boiling salt-vinegar-sugar brine, screw on the lids, and pop the jars in a 250-degree oven for 10 minutes, at which point you turn off the oven and let the jars sit in there until morning. 

For real? I said, jaw on the floor.

For real, she said.

So this spring I planted 12 (or was it 18?) cucumber plants. Not just for the dills — I’m the only one who really eats them — but also for sweets. We’d been totally out of sweet pickles for months, much to everyone’s tremendous annoyance, and I’d been compensating with assorted, (far too) expensive jars of pickles, none of which the kids liked as much as our homemade sweets. (I have a very good recipe for sweets, if I do say so myself….)

So anyway. I made a batch of these oven dills and then had to sit on my hands for a couple weeks, waiting for the flavors to develop. At long last, I finally popped open a jar and bit into the first dill and — CRUNCH. It worked!!!

These pickles actually have that wonderful, much longed-for snap and crunch! They’re not quite as crunchy as the refrigerator dills, but they are leagues crunchier than any other home-canned dill pickle I’ve ever had. 

gazpacho and dill pickles for breakfast, mmmm

Whoop-whoop!!

Crunchy Oven-Canned Dill Pickles
Adapted from my friend Amber’s recipe.

The second time I made these, a few of the jars didn’t seal, probably because:

1) I didn’t bring the brine to a full boil, and
2) I put the jars in the oven before I turned it on to preheat, which meant the temp in the jars maybe dropped a bit. 

According to my friend’s notes, if the jars don’t seal, just let them go for another 12 hours and they will most likely do their thing. I didn’t quite trust that, though (never mind that there’s plenty of vinegar, we’ve been known to eat jars of pickles that have unsealed, and you can see/smell problem jars), so I popped those jars into the door of the barn fridge. We’ll use them up first, lickety-split. 

per pint jar:
cucumbers, washed and cut into spears
1 small head of fresh dill
¼ teaspoon minced garlic
a pinch of red pepper flakes

Put the garlic and red pepper in the bottom of the jars. Tuck in the fresh dill. Arrange the cucumber spears, packing them in firmly.

for the brine:
1 quart water
1 cup apple cider vinegar
¼ cup uniodized salt
3 teaspoons white sugar

Combine all four ingredients, and bring to a full rolling boil. Pour the brine over the cucumbers. Wipe the rims of the jars and screw on the lids and rings. 

Place the jars in an oven that’s been preheated to 250 degrees. Do not over-crowd; leave a couple inches of space around each jar. “Bake” the cucumbers for 15 minutes. Once the time is up, turn off the oven, leaving the jars, undisturbed, in the oven overnight. If any of the jars haven’t sealed by the morning, let them sit a little longer (they may still seal) or simply  transfer them to the fridge. 

The pickles are ready to eat after two weeks.

This same time, years previous: fun times, the quotidian (8.3.20), the quotidian (8.5.19), glazed lemon zucchini cake, kiss the moon, kiss the sun, horses, hair, and eveything else under the sun, gingerbread.