Brunost Cheese

I got a Cheese Monkey Artisan Cheese-making kit from Laura for my birthday.

It has the equipment and ingredients (bar the perishable ones) and a recipe book for 20 different cheeses. On Friday I made some Mozzarella (which I've done before - see here)...  

...which didn't come out quite right. The thermometer wasn't reading the cheese temperature correctly as it got bunged up so it got a little overheated in the finishing. It still tasted good though and we had some on our pizza on Saturday and in our Insalata Caprese starter last night. It just wasn't as soft as it should have been.

I was left with a lot of whey, some of which I used in the mix for the pizza base and some in the water for boiling the pasta. But there was a recipe in the book for a cheese I'd never heard of from Norway which uses leftover whey in the recipe, so I thought I'd give that a try.

This is the recipe.

Yesterday morning I went and bought some more milk and some cream, mixed them together and started heating it gentle. 3 hours later, with regular stirring while it reduced, it looked like this.

Just starting to caramelise, but it wasn't think enough yet. After another hour it was getting quite thick.

I had enough for about 1 1/2 bowls. 

I put them in the fridge once they were cool and now the cheese has set. So how does it taste? Well it is caramelly and slightly sweet, a bit like fudge without any sugar, and with a consistency and colour like Scottish tablet. Interesting. We'll see how it develops over time. Thank-you Laura!