Yogurt Cheese: Spreadable Deliciousness

Now that I'm feeling pretty confident with making yogurt- and am churning it out by the litre full- I decided to try my hand at yogurt cheese. Past experiments have been unexplained, sorry failures (it looked like yogurt before and after the experiment!).

The following process, a really really easy one from Mother Earth News, worked! The by-product of essentially STRAINED YOGURT, was a creamy, stiff spreadable cheese. Since I used homemade yogurt it was easily 1/3 of the price of cream cheese, and the prep time was under 5 minutes.

Here's how I did it:

Layered 4-8 layers of cheese cloth (found at dollar and grocery stores) in a pasta strainer and put the strainer on a pie plate. 

 Poured plain  (you can use flavoured) yogurt into the cloth covered strainer: I got about 1/2 the measure of cheese from 1 part yogurt.  

Covered the entire thing with a plastic bag and put it in the fridge overnight. The whey strained out and settled in the pan.

NOTE: I have a friend from Greece who simply wraps up the cheese cloth around the yogurt and hangs it above the sink. 

I still need to experiment with using the whey- I've read you can put it in bread, use it watered down as a liquid fertilizer, add it to shakes, feed it to pets... but I haven't tried any of this yet! Any uses for whey that you know of?

And lining the strainer is cheese! Look how stiff it is- it holds its shape, but is more spreadable than cream cheese.

Here I served the cheese with olives and pita. About an hour before serving I had mixed in oregano, lemon juice, worcester sauce, and pepper. On another occasion I mixed it with hot pepper jelly. If you do it, let me know what other spice mixes you try to add to my repertoire.