Homemade Cream Cheese

Hello and welcome! For the inaugural post on Spoonful of Sugar, I've decided to (try to) make cream cheese at home.

It all started when I was watching the Cooking Channel and saw that a chef in a New Orleans restaurant made his own lox. Now, before you say anything, let me explain a little bit about my secret obsession. In the restaurant business, there is a well known game that chefs play called The Last Meal. You go around the table (or bar as it is most times) and ask what you would eat for your last meal.

For my last meal there'd be quite a few courses, most of which would include sugar, but the head-liner would be a fresh, hand-crafted bagel with delicious cream cheese and lox. Lox is salmon, NOT SMOKED SALMON. I repeat: lox is NOT smoked salmon. In fact, lox is raw. Don't freak out, raw isn't always bad!

Anyway, back to New Orleans. This chef was curing his own salmon on sight, which was inspirational. The basic method is to get yourself a big ol' slab of fresh (wild-caught if possible) salmon. We chose a 2 lbs. slab of Keta Salmon from Whole Foods. Next step, slap that baby on a big roll of plastic wrap and begin to bury it in equal parts sugar (yes, sugar) and salt (we used Hawaiian Pink Sea Salt.) Next, grind some fresh cracked pepper on top, black or white, and then lay on some beautifully green, fresh dill sprigs. Wrap it all up in plastic wrap really tight, put it in a plastic or glass dish, weight it down with canned goods or wine bottles (because you know you've got a few bottles of Pinot Grigio in that fridge gal pal...) and wait.

Now, you know about the lox, but this is about cream cheese. And as a warning, you should know that in this blog, there will be many tangents.

So! There are many ways to make cream cheese, but we're going to focus on the simplest way, the one that I chose. You need 1 ingredient. Seriously! One ingredient. Ready? Yogurt. Now, I used "The Greek Gods" brand Greek yogurt from Whole Foods, which I probably won't do again because when tasted, it was a bit too tangy in my opinion.

To make Cream Cheese you will need the following:

1 container plain yogurt

1 bowl

1 dish-towel or cheese cloth (either will work, so don't worry about going out and hunting down cheese cloth.)

some twine, string, rubber band, duct tape, wire, etc., etc. (Basically, anything with which you can tie a knot.)

Now, find a space in your house that's relatively cool, and has something from which you can hang your cheese.

Unfold your dish towel and plop a bit of yogurt into the center. We're not talking the whole container, just enough for a test-batch. I used about 1/2 a cup or so.

Now, wrap the yogurt up in a ball shape and twist the towel to secure. Liquid WILL drain out. Don't worry, that's what's supposed to happen. This liquid is whey, which, if you're very daring, you may save to make ginger-ale and numerous other goodies.

Tie your little cheese bundle up and hang over your bowl to let the whey drip out.

Wait 7-10 hours. (Overnight is fine too.)

Now, when you wake up or your timer goes off you'll have fresh, homemade cream cheese to spread on anything you want. Hell, eat it with a spoon if that's your thing. We don't judge here.

I hope you all thoroughly enjoyed your cream cheese tutorial, and all of the ramblings that went with it. Think of them as your side salad, or for those of us who aren't very worried about carbs, your fries! :)

Next time, we'll start talking about that salmon again! It went in the fridge last night, so hopefully in a day or two, the Murphy household will be feastin' on fish!

That's it for now! So until next time, enjoy your loved ones, and your life with a Spoonful Of Sugar!