We all know that Mascarpone cheese is used for the famous Italian dessert Tiramisu. Tiramisu means lift me up or pick me up in Italian and I would have to agree. Tiramisu is by far one of my favorite desserts and I hope to write about it soon. I will attempt to come up with a version not seen by anyone which will include homemade ladyfingers or a version similar.
This was my first attempt at making this wonderful cheese and for my first time out I did rather well if I do say so myself. For all those reading this that do not know anything about this wonderful cheese allow me to tell you a little about the King of butter fat cheeses. The cheese originated in Lombaridia region of Italy. This cheese is the king of all high butter fat cheeses and can be a double or triple-creamed. Some have compared Mascarpone Cheese to cream cheese and although there are similarities they're different. Cream Cheese is to Mascarpone Cheese as a Marathon runner is to the Sprinter. There is no comparison. I came across several recipes for Mascarpone cheese but there seems to be only two recipes or rather two techniques to make this glorious cheese. One version uses and acid normally tartaric and it's heated to 185-195 degrees.
The other method is my personal preference in which you introduce a bacteria culture to the milk and ripen your cheese naturally. The cream is heated to 86 F, culture is introduced and after a 10-12 hour wait at room temperature you have Mascarpone cheese.
I used whipping cream from Twin Brooks Creamery. I won't go into all the juicy stuff about this farm but lets just say this is very high end stuff. Jersey cows, organic, hormone free etc etc. This is the creme de la creme of farms in the Northwest for cheese makers.
Following the instructions meticulously I took the cream to 86 f and stirred in the culture.
After twelves hours sitting at room temp I had Mascarpone Cheese. What's kind of funny about this step was I have my air conditioner on and I keep my house extremely cold so I had to heat a separate room in the house just for the cheese to ferment.
I decided to split up the mascarpone cheese in half. This is the half that sat covered in a bowl for about 6 hours. Amazing texture!!!
I put the other half in cheesecloth and nestled it over a colander and let it sit for 6 hours to drain off excess whey in a refrigerator. This step will make a denser cheese.
Out of the cheesecloth and ready for the step.
We were going over to some friends for some Mexican Dominos and I decided to convert my cheese into a dip. I added just a hint of sugar to kick it for all three dips but you could have added any sweetener to this cheese.
First dip was the all natural Mascarpone cheese undrained of extra whey.
Amazing is an understatement. Very, very smooth.
This is my Mexican style Mascarpone dip in light of the game we were playing. A mojito dip!!! Yes it had a hint of tequila, lime and other species in it. Awesome!!
This is the Asian version. Chives, Sesame seed oil and traditional Asian species. Out of this world.
I think you can add anything to Mascarpone cheese and it will taste good. Draining the extra whey is a personal preference and all the dips would have been fine without this extra step.
After making this cheese I had a brief conversation with a cheese guru and she mentioned she likes Mascarpone cheese made with Jersey Cows but using their 1/2 and 1/2 and not their whipping cream.
So this made me think about fat content. I wrote Twin Brooks creamery and they told that their Half and Half and whipping cream are processed the same way and the only difference is their fat content. The whipping cream is 40-41% butterfat and the Half and Half is 12-13% butter fat. Next time I make the cheese I will play around with percentages. I.E maybe 1 pint of whipping cream and 1 pint of Half and Half which will average out ot 26-27 %. Anyhow it is fun to experiment.
Gratuitous pictures below...
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