How to make mascarpone at home. Mascarpone and sour cream cream: preparation features and recipes Recipe for mascarpone cheese at home using sour cream

Today, Mascarpone is the most preferred product of many famous chefs, used in the preparation of various culinary masterpieces. The unsurpassed taste with a creamy tint and creamy texture appeals not only to adults, but also to children. Based on Mascarpone, you can prepare many desserts that can amaze your family and friends.

What is it?

Mascarpone is a cheese that originated in Lombardy, northern Italy. The word itself means “cottage cheese” or “cream”.

Initially, milk from female buffaloes was used to make this type of cheese. But in our time, they have abandoned this special ingredient and replaced it with cow's milk cream.

By its consistency and structure, Mascarpone is classified as a spreadable curd cheese. They have a very delicate texture and a creamy flavor. In addition, spreadable cheeses cook quite quickly and do not age over time. Mascarpone is distinguished by its constant freshness and softness; it is not pressed or added salt during production.

The special consistency of Mascarpone cheese is suitable for preparing various desserts, such as cheesecakes and, of course, the well-known tiramisu.

To make delicious Mascarpone cheese at home, You should know some rules thanks to which the result will exceed all expectations.

Lemon juice is often used to make soft cheese. It is this that plays the role of a thickener, but not only for cream, but also for sour cream and other dairy products. Some housewives have their own opinion on this matter and recommend using wine-based vinegar instead of lemon juice. It is this liquid, preferably home-made, that will allow you to achieve subtle tenderness and extraordinary taste.
To make Mascarpone you need to use high fat cream. The minimum fat content of the purchased product must be at least 28%. The ideal option would be cream with 33% fat content. The maximum limit is 40%. You shouldn’t even consider it above, otherwise you won’t be able to make high-quality cheese.
When the cooking process is in progress, you should always have a thermometer at hand. If it is not possible to use a temperature meter, you will have to use your own finger, immersing it in the prepared mass. If the sensations are tolerable, then the temperature of the product is acceptable, but if it is impossible to tolerate, then the Mascarpone should be cooled a little more.

When the cooking process has come to an end, it is necessary to check the resulting consistency. Any spoon except a wooden one will do for this. The cutlery is lowered into the prepared mass and then carefully removed. A correctly carried out procedure will show a circle of cheese on the surface of the spoon.
Those who like to eat dense and thick Mascarpone should remember that after cooking the product must be put in the refrigerator. Lovers of soft and delicate consistency can start consuming immediately.
When heating a creamy product or sour cream, it is necessary to set the minimum fire pressure, otherwise the bottom of the pan will burn, the smell will mix with the product, and the finished Mascarpone will emit a burning smell.

Knowing and taking into account all the subtleties and nuances of cooking, every housewife should try to prepare this type of cheese in her kitchen. After cooking, the aura and smells of the house will be filled with tenderness, lightness and subtlety, which will awaken the appetite of the whole family.

Recipes

Creamy Mascarpone will be an ideal breakfast option for the whole family. Especially when you consider that the cheese dessert was prepared at home by the housewife, and not bought in a store. The culinary world boasts many recipes for homemade Mascarpone; every housewife can only make a choice. The main thing is to do everything step by step, without getting lost in the steps of the instructions.

From sour cream

The option of making cheese from sour cream is quite popular.

Ingredients:

lemon juice – 35 ml;
sour cream with 20% fat content – 775 ml;
milk 3.2% fat – 190 ml.

The preparation method includes several steps.

Sour cream and milk should reach room temperature, after which they are mixed.
The resulting consistency is placed in an enamel container and placed on low heat, while constantly stirring with a wooden spoon. While the simmering process is underway, it is necessary to constantly check the temperature; it should not exceed 75 degrees.
At this point, add lemon juice to the simmering mass. After some time, the mixture will begin to curdle. It is important to prevent the boiling process from starting.
Afterwards, turn off the heat, cover the container and leave to cool at room temperature. While the workpiece is cooling, you need to take gauze, fold it in six layers and wet it, preferably in filtered water. Then place the soaked cloth in a colander.
The cooled Mascarpone billet is placed on cheesecloth for about an hour. During this time, the whey drains completely. If one hour is not enough, you can wait some more time. It is important not to influence this process with pressure or pressure.
And after complete draining, you need to press the resulting product with your hands. Transfer it to a plastic container and put it in the refrigerator. Two days are given for use.

From the cream

The recipe for making Mascarpone from cream is very similar to the method of making cheese from milk. But still there are some differences.

Ingredients:

lemon juice – 15 ml;
cream 15-20% fat – 385 g.

The cooking method is slightly different from the previous one.

Cream is poured into an enamel container. The container with the workpiece is placed on minimal heat, brought to a temperature of 80 degrees. It is worth noting that the cream must first cool to room temperature.
In the absence of a thermometer, to understand the temperature norm, it is necessary to monitor the consistency of the mixture and its behavior. As soon as the cream begins to foam, the required temperature has been reached. The container is immediately removed from the heat.
Immediately pour lemon juice into the hot cream and mix until smooth. After which the container is again placed on low heat until the coagulation process takes place. Approximate time is 8-15 minutes.
The resulting mass is removed from the stove and left for 15 minutes at room temperature. At the same time, you don’t have to worry that the cream will split into whey and cottage cheese.
Next, the technical cooking process begins. Place gauze in a colander, pre-folded in six layers and soaked in plain water. The creamy mass is poured into this structure and left to drain for one hour.
After this time, the gauze is rolled up into a bag, tied and hung for two hours. The resulting cheese must be kneaded with your hands, put in a plastic container, put a sinker on top and put in the refrigerator for ten hours.
You have three days to consume this cheese.

In a slow cooker

For a modern housewife who values her time and work, cooking Mascarpone in a slow cooker will be an ideal option.

Ingredients:

cream 10% – 300 ml;
cream 20% – 300 ml;
lemon juice – 20 ml.

The cooking method is very simple and does not require any skills.

The cream is poured into the multicooker bowl. The lid is closed and the “Desserts” program is set, cooking time is ten minutes.
Three minutes before the program turns off, lemon juice is poured into the hot creamy mass. The lid does not close, the mixture is constantly stirred.
After which the resulting workpiece must be cooled, possibly directly in the same bowl.
The next step is to transfer the creamy mass into gauze, pre-folded in several layers, soaked and placed on a sieve.
After which the fabric with the Mascarpone blank is tied and hung for three hours, perhaps a little more.
The finished product is transferred to the refrigerator in a plastic container.

Mascarpone can be prepared not only with cream and milk. Unsurpassedly delicious cheese is made from milk powder, wine vinegar and even cottage cheese; the main thing is to take the preparation process seriously so that the result is impressive.

What can you do with cheese?

Today, the diversity of culinary skills allows you to prepare many delicious and healthy desserts with Mascarpone cheese, for example, cheesecake, tiramisu, chocolate treats and many more options. In addition to sweet treats, Mascarpone is used to make main dishes, such as ravioli.

Tiramisu

For a romantic dinner, tiramisu is the perfect sweet ending. The recipe is simple, and the result is extraordinary.

Ingredients:

Mascarpone – 400 g;
savoiardi cookies – 300 g;
coffee (strong) – 250 ml;
powdered sugar – 150 g;
eggs – 5 pcs.;
cognac – 2 tbsp. l.;
cocoa powder – 2 tsp.

Let's consider the cooking method.

First you need to brew coffee and dilute it with cognac.
The next step is to separate the egg white and yolk. Place the whites in the refrigerator and mix the yolks with powdered sugar.
Mix sweet yolk with Mascarpone cheese.
The reserved whites must be salted and beaten with a mixer until foam appears. Then mix them with the cream base.
Next, take a deep mold, onto the bottom of which are placed cookies, previously soaked in the coffee mixture.
Half of the cream is placed on top of the cookies. Next, the layer of cookies is repeated. And again the cream, which now needs to be carefully smoothed.
The prepared miracle must be refrigerated for six to seven hours. If time permits, leave it there overnight.

American cheesecake

Fans of various cuisines around the world can prepare various desserts, for example, American cheesecake.

Ingredients:

cookies – 300 g;
butter – 150 g;
Mascarpone – 500 g;
cream – 200 g;
granulated sugar – 150 g;
gelatin – 20 g.

The cooking method is quite simple.

First you need to soak the gelatin in water, following the instructions on the package.
Grind the cookies using a blender.
The butter needs to be melted.
Crushed cookies need to be mixed with butter. Transfer the resulting mixture into a baking dish, level and press firmly.
The next step is dedicated to gelatin. It must be put on fire and dissolved.
Using a mixer, you need to beat the granulated sugar and cream. Add Mascarpone to the resulting cream and mix thoroughly. Then combine with dissolved gelatin.
The prepared cheese filling is evenly laid out on top of the cookie base.
Place the cheesecake in the refrigerator for four or five hours.
After the specified time, the dessert is cut into equal pieces and served on the table.

To learn how to make Mascarpone cheese at home, watch the following video.

Cheese finds a place in a huge number of recipes and snacks, but, unfortunately, it is not so easy to find this product of Italian cheese makers on the shelves of our markets, and if you do, the price of the cheese may unpleasantly surprise you. One way or another, you shouldn’t deny yourself the pleasure of bringing to life dishes involving mascarpone, because soft cheese can be made at home from the familiar sour cream.

How to make mascarpone from sour cream?

The first cooking method is considered the most hassle-free, because to implement it you don’t even need to turn on the stove, you just need to choose sour cream and buy a piece of gauze. The choice of sour cream is extremely important. After all, it is its taste and fat content that will subsequently affect the similar characteristics of the cheese, and therefore, ideally, take non-sour sour cream and be sure to ensure that the fat content in it is not below 20%. You can make mascarpone from homemade sour cream, or you can replace it with store-bought sour cream - it doesn’t matter. Once the main ingredient is chosen, you can add spices to it: a pinch of salt, some dried herbs, sugar, pepper, or you can leave it untouched.

Place the sour cream on top of a colander lined with two layers of gauze, gather the ends of the gauze and cover the sour cream with it. Place a weighted plate on top of the mixture and place everything in the refrigerator. Homemade mascarpone cheese made from sour cream will be ready after 10-12 hours of standing.

To pamper your family with a delicious cheesecake, fluffy tiramisu, or original rolls, you will need mascarpone cheese. You can buy it in the store, or you can prepare it yourself. Such a product is not cheap, and you cannot always be sure of its quality, so it will be useful to learn how to prepare mascarpone at home. Moreover, it is easy to make from readily available products, while in search of ready-made cheese, you may have to search all the nearest counters.

What is mascarpone

Before looking at recipes for making mascarpone at home, let's find out what kind of product it is and when it appeared. This cream cheese was first prepared in Italy 4 centuries ago. The classic recipe is based on only a few ingredients - heavy cream and tartaric and acetic acid. Cream with a fat content of at least 25% was placed in a water bath and heated without boiling, stirring constantly. Tartaric acid was added to begin the curdling process of the milk. The product was then cooled and suspended in bags to allow the whey to drain. The recipe does not include the use of enzymes or starters, so in fact, mascarpone is not fully cheese. Previously, full-fat buffalo milk was used to prepare the product. Of course, today the dish is mainly prepared from ordinary cow's milk and cream. And some recipes call for the use of less fatty dairy products.

The product has a soft consistency and neutral curd taste, creamy or pasty texture.

Contains a huge number of recipes. Mascarpone becomes the basis of many desserts, but it goes well not only with fruits and berries, but also with vegetables and even red fish. The range of uses for the product is very wide, and you can enjoy it simply from a plate, enjoying the delicate creamy taste, or make delicious and healthy sandwiches.

Today you can make mascarpone at home from different dairy products:

Cream
Sour cream
Milk, kefir and eggs

Mascarpone recipes

Homemade cream mascarpone:

You will need:

Liter of cream with fat content from 25%
¼ teaspoon citric acid
Linen towel or gauze
Colander

Preparation:

Place the cream in a saucepan and place on low heat, heat to 75 degrees, avoiding boiling.
Dissolve citric acid in a tablespoon of warm water, stirring the cream, add the mixture
Stir the cream without removing from the heat for about 10 minutes until the contents of the pan thicken.
We fold the gauze in several layers and line a colander with it, which we then place well on the pan.
Turn the contents of the pan over, thereby transferring the mixture into a colander
Now stir the mixture again with a spoon so that the whey seeps through the cheesecloth and colander.
We wait until the future mascarpone cream cheese cools down and the consistency resembles dough
Now we transfer the product into a convenient container and put it in the refrigerator

A liter of cream will yield approximately 500 grams of cheese. As a result, the product will be several times cheaper than store-bought, without being inferior to it in taste

You can prepare the product without heating:

500 ml of cream 15-20% fat content is poured into a bowl
Add a tablespoon of lemon juice to it and mix well
Gradually the cream will begin to thicken and the mass will become heterogeneous.
After this, as in the previous recipe, pour the mixture into a colander on cheesecloth.
Cover with a plate and put in the refrigerator for a day

Homemade sour cream mascarpone

This is the cheapest way to make cream cheese at home, but you must understand that the taste will be noticeably different from the store-bought product. All you need to do is hang 500 grams of sour cream with a fat content of at least 30% in gauze and leave for 13 hours. The output will be 250 grams of creamy delicacy.

There is also a recipe for mascorpone made from milk and sour cream:

800 grams of high-fat sour cream, ideally homemade
150 milliliters milk
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Pour the milk into the sour cream and mix well. Then put on fire and heat to a temperature of 75 degrees. While the mixture is on the fire, it must be stirred all the time. Then add lemon juice and remove from heat. Dairy products should not be allowed to boil. Cool the product slightly and drain on cheesecloth in a colander, as described in the first recipe. Stirring the mixture with a spoon or alternately lifting one and the other edge of the gauze will help speed up the process of draining the whey. After this, you need to leave the mass for an hour so that the whey is completely drained, and after an hour the mass in gauze can be squeezed out again. Then the product will be denser and drier. If you want your homemade mascarpone cream cheese to be juicier and softer, do not squeeze out the whey.

According to this recipe, the product will be very tender and soft and will become an ideal base for a wide variety of desserts.

How to make mascarpone cheese from kefir at home

We will talk about two options for preparing creamy mass from this fermented milk product. For the first option, you only need kefir.

We send a package of fermented milk product with 3% fat content to the freezer, keep it there until it freezes completely
We cut the packaging and split the resulting kefir ice into pieces. Then wrap it in gauze
We place the gauze with the mass inside in a sieve, which we place on a suitable container.
We wait until the kefir melts and the whey separates from it.
After 10-14 hours we unwrap it and we can enjoy the tender curd cheese

This recipe is suitable for making a budget cake and for curd mousse desserts.

Cheese made from milk, kefir and eggs:

1 liter of milk
500 ml kefir
1 egg
A teaspoon of salt and sugar
Citric acid on the tip of a teaspoon

How to cook:

Pour the milk into a saucepan, add salt and sugar and heat over low heat.
Stir constantly during the process and do not let the mixture boil.
Remove from heat and add kefir
Stir until the mixture coagulates
Place it on gauze and hang it in it so that the whey flows faster than the glass.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg with citric acid, and then mix them with the milk mass
The consistency should become homogeneous and soft

We have given only some of the recipes for preparing the delicacy. As you can see, in some cases you can still use cream that is not the fattest. But still, you need to remember that creamy mascorpone is a fatty cheese.

In the production of Mascarpone, no starter or enzymes are used.

This method of preparation is more similar to the process of making not cheese, but... yoghurts.

Therefore, it is easy to make at home from a variety of products.

For example, from sour cream.

Natural Mascarpone cheese

Ingredients:

2 cans of sour cream 30% - approximately 500 g

Cooking method:

1. Fold the gauze into 4 layers. Find a stick so that you can hang a bundle of cheese on it over a container for draining the whey.

This could be a wooden stirring spoon or some other kitchen utensil.

2. Pour in the sour cream, tie the gauze in a knot and hang it so that the whey drips off for 10-12 hours, or better yet, for a day.

3. As soon as the whey stops flowing, you can remove it, add powdered sugar and prepare desserts.

This amount yields about 300 g of cheese.

Adviсe:

It is advisable to take sour cream, not sour, homemade
the composition should not contain any extraneous additives such as stabilizers, only cream and sourdough
if you add a little cream 35%, then you can’t distinguish it from mascarpone at all

Recipe with lemon

Lemon is added to this recipe with sour cream to obtain a thicker and denser consistency.

Similar in preparation from cream.

Ingredients:

sour cream 30% - 400-500 g
lemon juice - 2 tbsp. l. (1/2 small lemon)

Homemade mascarpone recipe:

1. Place sour cream in a saucepan, add juice, stir and place on low heat.

2. Stirring, cook the mixture for 3 minutes. Do not boil! The sour cream will become liquid. Remove from heat and cool.

3. We make a structure from a bowl, a colander and put it in not several layers of gauze, but preferably a waffle towel, so that there is less glass required. Pour in the sour cream, cover with a lid and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, the most delicate cream cheese with a dense consistency will be ready and, if you use it, whey. Some of it will be absorbed into the towel.

The yield of cheese from 400 g of sour cream is approximately 250 g. This is quite enough to make cheesecake or tiramisu for 4 servings.

Classic cheese is made from cream, just like sour cream. Achieving a delicate creamy taste is quite simple, you just need to follow the recipe correctly.

You will need:

1. 700-800 grams of fatty, homemade sour cream (you can buy it, but not less than 25% fat);

2. a glass of fresh non-skimmed milk;

3. a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice.

As you can see, there are few ingredients. It remains to understand the cooking technology. The first step is to combine sour cream with milk and mix thoroughly in a saucepan. Then put the mixture on the fire and heat to about 75 degrees. Don't forget to stir! As soon as the milk solution reaches the desired temperature, add lemon juice and wait until the sour cream curdles. Be careful, it should not boil! Turn off the heat and wait a couple more minutes.

While the workpiece is cooling, take out a colander and 0.5–1 m of gauze. Cover the colander with a cloth and place it in the sink or other large container. Slowly pour the sour cream into a colander and leave for 40-50 minutes. After the specified time, check whether the serum has drained. If not, gently squeeze the mass through cheesecloth and leave for the same amount of time. The consistency of the cheese should be thick and dense. The finished product should be stored in the refrigerator.

Full-fat sour cream mascarpone for the lazy

Don't have enough time for complex dishes? This recipe is so simple that it requires minimal effort. You only need one ingredient - fatty, non-acidic sour cream (from 25%). It is best to buy homemade sour cream, but city residents can get by with store-bought ones.

Prepare a colander and place a couple of layers of gauze or thin organza on top of it so that the edges hang down at the bottom. Pour 700–800 grams of fatty sour cream inside and cover with the remaining cloth on top. Now put a colander in a container (for excess liquid) and put it in the refrigerator for 10–12 hours. For a thicker cheese consistency, place a weight (for example, a plate of water) on top, which will speed up the process of decanting the whey. You can add your favorite herbs, herbs, black pepper and other spices to your taste. If desired, you can add salt or, conversely, add sugar. Bon appetit!