Chevre

Chilled raw goats milk, 1 gallon

Having goats, I am no stranger to owning vast amounts of milk, and I routinely make cheese of one kind or another. Sometimes I get success, sometimes failure. For example, my chevre has been all over the place. Sometimes it's gentle tasting and creamy, but sometimes grainy, tart or watery. Partly, this has to do with where my goat is in her lactation cycle and the goat's diet. But it also comes from my being complacent.

I start making some of the simple cheese from memory instead of from recipe, and it shows in their quality.

At least, I hope. I am going to try following Mary Karlin's chevre recipe as closely as I can and see if I can get a batch of smooth, creamy, firm, mild tasking chevre.

I am using milk from my goat, Meggie. Because I am making the cheese for home consumption, I will use the milk raw, as we normally drink it.

The recipe is already contains a step I don't normally do. I usually warm the milk up straight out of the fridge, but per instructions, I let it rest for one hour first. Then I warm it to 86 degrees (30 C.), sprinkle 1/2 t of starter culture over it, and let it sit for 5 minutes.

Stirring in 1/2 teaspoon meso starter

Again, I usually do the impatient thing and mix in the starter without waiting. Today I wait, then mix.

Then I wait again.

Normally, at this point, I add a drop of rennet mixed in a quarter cup of water. Today, I just leave the milk to ripen. The starter culture will grow, turning the milk's lactose into lactic acid, reducing the pH and causing the cheese solids to form a curd.







The milk with its starter culture incubates overnight. It should form a solid curd floating in clear whey. Instead, 12 hours after I mixed it, it's still semi-gelled. It looks like buttermilk. It is buttermilk. I leave it.

Somewhat thickened, somewhat grainy curds after 12 hours

Curds after 24 hours - still not solid

It has now been 24 hours. The milk/curd is still looser than I am used to. It is similar to home made yogurt. When I touch it with a spoon, there is whey that runs around the spoon, but the curds are still liquid enough to fill in instead of breaking. The surface is pock-marked when whey speckles it as I remove the spoon. I am very nervous about draining these curds. They look like grainy liquid, but I faithfully ladle them into my reusable nylon cheese fabric.

Draining the grainy, still-fluid curds

To my wonder, the curds don't drain through the holes in the cloth. Instead, whey seeps through, leaving the curd behind. After half an hour, I dutifully toss the soggy mess with 1 tsp salt.

The draining takes much longer than I am used to and longer than the instructions led me to believe. 24 hours, and then 36, elapse before the cheese has reached chevre consistency.

But OH, MY, is it good. This chevre is so much smoother than the cheese I make using a drop of rennet. It is better than any I have made and far superior to anything you can buy.

To answer the cheesepalooza questions, this cheese is:

Appearance: very white, dense, smooth, matte, shiny when warmed, like  cream cheese
Nose (aroma): faint, milky, slightly sour
Overall Taste:  mild, no goaty flavor, slightly tart, very rich
Sweet to Salty: sweet, in spite of the added salt
Mild (mellow) to Robust : mellow
Mouth Feel: creamy, slightly buttery. It left a slight buttery coating to my mouth. Contrary to my expectations when I saw the grainy coagulate, there was no graininess left when it drained. NONE. Smooth as silk. The texture was truly perfect.

Some of it is getting spread on home made bagels. My son's school serves bagels  and cream cheese for school breakfast - he told me mine are better!

Some is crusted with breadcrumbs and baked, then served atop a salad of homegrown greens.

The rest will be crumbled on pasta. Yum.

Shared on :  cheesepalooza

Better than buttercream

Sometimes, there isn't time to make cheesecake. Or I simply don't want to get every pan in the house dirty and heat up the kitchen. The fruit is piling up and attracting fruit flies. My family is tired of my seasonal fruit obsession, but I know how good it is, and how sinful it is to waste it.

And still that relentless, generous, sweet, epic garden keeps pumping out fruit. Berries, and plums, and now the pears are ripening, and soon the grapes will suddenly change color, and the figs will droop down in that ugly but delicious way they do when they need to be eaten.

 The acid juices are seeping into tiny cuts on my fingertips from the plum pits scraping my fingers as I pit them to go in the drier. My hands are stained with berries and ache from milking and my shins are bruised from leaning into the rungs of the orchard ladder.


I love trees, but I'm tired of getting bits of twig in my hair and spiders stuck to the sides of my face as I harvest. I'm tired to looking down the ladder at the hungry goats hoping a bucket of ripe plums might fall raining down on them.

 Buckets and flats of fruit, as far as the eye can see, and it's boring. I just want everyone to eat it now. I wish I had some shortcake. I wish I had an angel food cake. I want to make the fruit seem special, because it is, but right now it doesn't feel very special.

Meanwhile, the goats' milk keeps coming. I mechanically turn gallons of it into chevre, the very simplest recipe I know. To a gallon of milk, add 1/4 cup buttermilk, a drop of rennet in water, and let it sit at room temperature till it forms a curd. Drain in a cheesecloth bag. That's all there is to it.

David is bringing home boxes of honey. Soon it will be harvest time for that, too, and bees will come looking for the enticing smell. Jar after sticky jar, or if there is enough, buckets and barrels of it.


All I can think about is ordering pizza. I need to get a grip.




These are the times to pull out the mixer and make the best goo on earth. I call it buttercream, because honeycheese sounds a bit weird, and this should be comfort food.


Take chevre, or very dry yogurt cheese. Process, blend or stir to completely soften and break up any clumps. Add honey till it's sweet and completely combined.  I add about 1/3 cup honey per 2 cups of cheese. You could also add up to 1 t vanilla, but I usually don't. I prefer the texture when mixed with a paddle blade in my Kitchenaide mixer.

Chill. Serve. The texture should be velvety smooth, opulent and plush. The flavor should be slightly tangy, floral, milky, and evocative. Whenever we eat this, my son starts speculating on what blue whale milk tastes like. We've heard that it's thick as whipped cream, rich with butterfat and sugars, and makes baby whales gain three pounds an hour. This butter cream evokes such thoughts, but the ingredients are really no more decadent than putting cheese on a sandwich and a few spoonfuls of honey in your tea!

Everybody loves parfait

If it's too thin, it's called cream sauce and I drizzle it over fruit, or add it to oatmeal.

If it's just right, it's called butter cream and one could frost cakes with it. It won't stay perfect for long. It will eventually weep and separate, so don't use it for a birthday cake. This is daily fare, meant to eat now. Mostly we use it as a layer in a parfait, with fruit of any kind, or dip large fruits into bowls of it.

I've never had a batch that was too thick, but maybe you will one day. If you inhabit such a parallel universe, no fears. Add coco powder and call it a truffle.

However it turns out, it is a great emergency dessert. It tastes special without being hard work. There's plenty of work to go around without trying for more!

The harvest season is one of those strange times, when we complain about the things we love the most. I've heard kids do this about video games (Oh, I hate this level where you get stuck trying to rescue the princess) and adults whine about rock climbing and about solving jigsaw puzzles and about weaving in the loose ends in knitting.

When people say they 'hate' some element of a beloved activity, they are searching for some other meaning. Something akin to 'my passion for what I'm doing is being proven  by this most tedious or difficult task.'

In this century and community, it is a privilege and a choice for me to grow so much of my family's food. I know that, and I never regret the choice or compare myself to those who rely on farming without the fallback of a day job. Not just that - the harvest is a time of solemn gratitude, of wonder at the abundance around us. But the sheer work of it does knock me on my backside every time. 

Thanks to butter cream I have a little more backside to cushion the fall!

Shared on:frugal days sustainable ways, gastronomicalsovereignty, spain-in-iowa simple lives Thursday , littlehouseinthesuburbs

Cheesecake from our own goats

By popular demand, the recipe for goat cheese cheesecake, for those times when you have too much of everything.

A dairy goat in full milk can produce more milk than a family of three to drink or pour over cereal. Meggie has been very generous all summer, and we are getting creative. The garden is going full force. We are eating   our fill of fruits and vegetables; though we love it, we sometimes crave a treat. I wanted a dessert that felt indulgent and that  balanced out a dinner of fresh, raw foods.

This cheesecake uses honey, yogurt, cheese, and eggs from the farm. If you have a milk goat and chickens, and are comfortable making yogurt, this is pretty standard fare. But outside the farm, you won't run into this cheesecake. Its texture is denser, less lush, and slightly grainier than restaurant cheesecake. Although still very rich, it doesn't have the creaminess I am used to. I think of it as more like a custard in a graham cracker crust. My friend Sally has her own name for it - maybe she'll post it as a comment.

I apologize in advance that either this dessert tastes better than it looks, or I simply was not creative enough to take a glamour shot of it.

Cheesecake recipe



6 graham crackers
3 tbsp butter
1 Cup chevre or well drained yogurt cheese
1/2 cup yogurt (preferably goat's milk)
3 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp honey
1 or 2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp flour (if using yogurt cheese instead of chevre)

Preheat the oven to 350.

Assemble a spring form pan.

Melt the butter, and crumble the crackers, either by hand or in a food processor by pulsing 8 to 10 times. Mix the melted butter into the crumbs with 2 or 3 pulses. While making this recipe, I noticed that all the other buttons on my processor are new, but the "Pulse" button is worn out. Things tell their own stories, don't they?

Pat the crumbs out onto the bottom of the spring form pan. Bake the crust at 350 for 10 minutes, remove and cool while mixing the filling.

Reduce oven to 300.

While the crust is cooling, wipe the inside of the processor to remove crumbs. Place all the other ingredients in the processor, in the bowl of a mixer, or in a large bowl, and mix well. The flour gives the cheesecake a stronger set - if you use chevre from the store, omit flour for a more ethereal texture.

If you mix by hand, start by stirring the chevre until its well broken up. Then beat in the sugar till fluffy. Add the eggs one by one, then the other ingredients. However I find a kitchen appliance with a powerful motor is a big help with this!

The filling will have a very unpromising texture. It resembles eggnog in thickness, and if it didn't contain raw eggs I'd be tempted to taste it. It's probably yummy. But it looks like it will fail. Don't despair! Remind yourself again that this is sort of like custard.

Pour the mixture into the spring form. Place a cookie sheet on the bottom of the oven in case it drips, and slide the pan onto the middle rack. Bake 45 minutes and test. The center should jiggle like gelatin when you gently tilt the pan, but not slosh. A knife inserted in will displace the filling but should not come out clean. It should still be quite tender. If it's too gloopy, put it back for another 5 minutes, check again and repeat as needed.

Allow it to cool fully, then refrigerate at least 4 hours before serving. (Author's note - this never really happens. It's actually fine after an hour). Unmold the spring form, and set the bottom out on a plate.

You can top this with fruit or jam. Quince paste is one of our favorites, but it's pretty good on its own, too.

Tonight we are serving slices with a choice of blueberries, raspberries or blackberries. It's a very substantial dessert, almost like a second dinner. Late summer at Several Gardens Farm feels pretty good.