Homemade Cream Cheese

Cream cheese is so unbelievably easy to make yourself, you'll seriously wonder why you never knew about it... you can use your very own cream cheese you made yourself for making raw cheesecakes, as a spread for crackers or sandwiches, or try mixing some dried fruit through it and serving it up on a cheese platter.

This recipe makes one cup of cream cheese.

You'll need:

- One large tub of organic, natural, full fat, plain and unsweetened yoghurt. I like five:am yoghurt for this, which is very easily found in most major supermarkets.

-A large bowl

-A nut milk bag, cheese cloth or a (brand new!) thin dish cloth such as Chux

-A wooden spoon

-String

Place the nut milk bag/cheese cloth/dish cloth in the bowl and spoon in the yoghurt. Fasten with the string, and then fasten the whole bag to the middle of a wooden spoon. Let the spoon rest over the top of the bowl so the yoghurt can drip through the cloth and into the bowl. Avoid hanging it so low that the bottom of the cloth will be resting in liquid. Leave at room temperature overnight, or set it up in the morning and leave it be until you get home in the evening.  Release the bag from the wooden spoon and trip open. You'll be left with beautifully thick, organic cream cheese!

Don't throw away the liquid in the bottom of the bowel - this is whey, which can be used for fermenting vegetables (think pickles, kim chi or sauerkraut!). Store both the cheese and the whey in the fridge.

Check out the video below to walk you through it.

Enjoy! :-) x