How to Make the Creamiest Mascarpone Cheese | Bold Baking Basics

Hi, and welcome to Bold Baking Basics. This is where we go back and get stuck into the fundamentals of baking. These videos are about getting you to bake with confidence, anytime, anywhere. How to Make Cream Cheese is one of my biggest Bold Baking Basics videos with tens of thousands of shares. So of course, I got loads of requests asking to show you how to make mascarpone at home. It is really simple and you can use it in my tiramisu recipes and on my mushroom mascarpone pizza. As always, the recipe can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com along with all of my other Basics recipes. Okay, let's get started with our cream. So the star of the show here is cream, that's what makes this so yummy. Now you can use any type of cream that you like, a table cream, a pouring cream, single cream, double cream, whatever you have. All I'm going to do now is pour this into a heavy bottom saucepan. Now we're going to turn this on to a medium heat and wait patiently until it comes to a simmer. So once your cream comes to a simmer, I have some fresh lemon juice here. You can also use vinegar but I like to use lemon juice because it doesn't taste as strong. I'm going to add that in. And then with a hand whisk, just whisk it all together. If your cream bubbles up, turn down the heat a little because you just want it to simmer gently. So here's what we're looking for, you want this mix to get nice and thick. So every so often, with your whisk, just give it a bit of a stir, make sure it's not burning on the bottom. But what we're going to do now is play the waiting game. We're just going to hang out, be patient, and let it thicken. So while that's simmering away, let me drop a little bit of knowledge on you. The difference between cream cheese and mascarpone cheese is the fact that cream cheese is made with milk and it's curdled, and mascarpone is made with cream and it's not curdled. So they're kind of similar but they're different at the same time. And both are equally yummy. So this has been simmering for around 13-15 minutes or so, it's gotten really nice and thick. And here's what you want to see. Put in a spoon, and if it coats the back of the spoon, that means it's ready. It's gotten nice and thick, it's reduced down a good bit. It is perfect. So I'm going to turn it off the heat, and then I'm going to bring it over here and put it in my ice bath. Now the reason we're going to do this is because it cools it down nice and quickly. So now the next step for making our mascarpone is that we have to strain it. So here I have a sieve, a bowl, and some cheesecloth. Now I'm going to put a link on my website of where you can buy this, but honestly you can actually use a very thin, clean tea towel as well and that will work well. Now all I'm going to do is take my mascarpone, nice and cold, and pour it into my sieve. So there you go, now all the hard work is done. All we do now is wait. We're going to put this in the fridge for a minimum of 24 hours, let it hang, let the liquid separate a little bit for it to get nice and thick. Okay, so fast forward 24 hours, and here we have a lovely finished mascarpone cheese. So check this out. If you look in the bowl, there's a little bit of liquid that's separated, that is exactly what you want, it's only a few tablespoons. If you want, you can use this in bread making, curries, marinating meat, whatever you like. In the cheesecloth, we have our mascarpone, look at how beautiful that is and creamy. Now you just want to make sure that there's no liquid left in there. And then we're going to transfer this into a bowl. So now you're probably wondering, is this the same as store-bought? Well I'm going to let you in on a little secret, it's even better than store-bought. It's made with good quality ingredients, love, it's going to taste absolutely amazing. Now you want to pop this into your fridge and keep it in there for a maximum of 5 days. Head over to my website right now and you can find recipes of where to use this mascarpone cheese. I'll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking. Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs!