I'm not going to be able to give you a definite answer, but I might be able to point you in another direction.

First, I just finished making 'ricotta' using whole milk and cream. I say ricotta, but technically it's cottage, or 'farmers cheese'. I used the lemon juice method (I also threw the juice of an orange in one of the batches.)

I have no experience using just cream, but for the ricotta I like the milk and cream mix. It seems a bit richer than just milk. And yes, as you pointed out, as soon as the lemon juice hits the hot milk it begins to separate. I made sure the milk wasn't ultra pasteurized, but I'm glad you pointed out about the cream, I didn't even think to check. My recipe however, only calls for a cup of cream to 8 cups of milk.

That said, I also make wine. One of the ingredients that can be used in wine making is tartaric acid.It's readily available and fairly cheap through the internet or at wine/beer making shops.

One of the other uses for tartaric acid is, yep, you guessed it... mascarpone. There are other acids that will do the job, but I think the tartaric acid is one of the traditional activators. I haven't tried it yet, but I have a lb. of tartaric, so I have little excuse.

Btw... I have trouble using cheese clothe. It hates me! So, I went on the net and started looking around for alternatives. I found that bags made for nut milk are reusable... and better yet, I found a cheese supply site that sells food grade, reusable bags just for cheese making. I haven't looked into making the mascarpone beyond the basics, but I'll definitely be ordering those bags before my next batch of ricotta. If you need, let me know, I'll find the link.

Good luck!

I haven't made mascarpone, but I can highly recommend New England Cheesemaking Supply Co. They're the real deal.

I haven't made mascarpone, and I donated my cheese making books to a library recently (along with 500+ others), but I still have "On Food And Cooking" the science and lore of the kitchen - by Harold McGee, and some information I picked up along the way. Maybe there will be something in this information that can help.

McGee: Plain milk or cream is relatively stable when heated, but the extended heat treatment and abnormally high acidity have already caused partial aggregation of the casein in cultured products. Heat, salt, more acid, and even vigorous stirring all can cause curdling. The key to maintaining a smooth texture is gentleness. Heat gradually and moderately, and stir slowly.

Other information: This has to do with how to prevent homemade tomato soup from curdling, but I think the acid/milk theory may be similar.

-Add the acid (tomatoes in the case of the soup) to milk rather than the milk to the acid.

-Have both milk and acid hot when they are combined.

-Evaporated milk is the least likely milk product to curdle; non-fat dry milk is the most likely to curdle.

Thanks! Down the road
I will get some tartaric acid. For now, there is no time to order and receive
it.

Grainlady, from your
post, I see 2 things I did wrong, maybe 3. I don’t remember how fast I heated
the cream / milk, but it might not have been that gently. I don’t recall if I
used a double boiler, I think not. I wanted a larger quantity of the finished
cream, so using 1 quart of cream and 1 of milk, it could not fit my double
boiler.

The lemon juice was
at room temperature when I added it. ( I had thought about stirring a bit of
the hot cream into the cup holding the juice, but I didn’t do that.)

Next, when I saw it
start to curdle, I stirred vigorously in the attempt to get it to stop. That
probably made it worse.

I’ll try altering
these 3 things. I will also add the hot lemon juice a few drops at a time. If
it doesn’t work this time, I won’t make it again with lemon juice.

One thing I also
wondered about: most recipes called for making only a small quality of
mascarpone (2 cups cream/milk to 1 T lemon) When I doubled the cream + milk
volume, I also doubled the lemon juice. Was that a mistake? Is only a minute
quantity of lemon juice needed to start the reaction?

With the 'ricotta', when working with 8 cups whole milk and 1 cup heavy cream, I averaged 3-4 tsps lemon juice per batch.

When I doubled my batch and went straight to 1 gal. at a time, I tried to double the lemon juice but fell short by 2 tbsps. I'm learning on my own, and just figured I better stick to recipe amts. Vinegar is another acid that can be used for the 'ricotta', but as at least 1 blog said, it gives the cheese a slightly different texture. To compensate for the lack of lemon though, I added 2 tbsp. white vinegar to the 5-6 of lemon juice. I seemed to actually get more curds from that larger batch than the combined total of the first 2 smaller batches.

Unfortunately, I do not have the experience to know if we are working with chain reaction type mixes, or if there has to be a certain amt. of activator present for a given amount of milk/cream. And honestly, what I'm making might be different from the mascarpone. I'm guessing though that the type of reaction is the same, but it's the fat content that is different.

I always think it a shame that my Italian mother didn't carry these traditions down from my great grandmother. But I can't blame mom. Great Grandma stopped making her own 'pot cheese' (the name our family always uses for ricotta, and it comes from the way it's made) before Mom was even born. In NYC, there was so many shops and no one had cows, there was no reason to make your own cheese. All that wonderful history and tradition lost to the ages.

I just wish the generation before mine was inquisitive enough to ask.

I have tartaric acid! I googled my zip code and tartaric
acid and found 2 brew supply places that carry it. Not exactly close, but I
used it as an excuse to do last minute Christmas shopping nearby. The excursion
had a side benefit: I do some grocery shopping at a local chain store. I
stopped into one, and found it twice the size of the one I normally shop at.
They had whipping cream that is NOT ultra pasteurized, which my usual store
does not carry. Now both my cream component and my milk component can be regular pasteurized, which is better for coagulation, not
ultra pasteurized.

So, I’m ahead, on 2 levels. Now I will just have to heat my
milk / cream more slowly, plus heat up my tartaric acid solution before gently –
gently! Stirring in. The recipe I found that uses that calls for ¼ teaspoon
tartaric acid to 1 quart milk/cream. I’ll have to hope that doubling the tartaric
acid is the right thing to do, to go with 2 quarts of milk/cream.

Rgreen, my grandmother grew up on a dairy farm in Denmark. She
knew how to make just about everything, as the farm was self sufficient, and
they fed not only the family, but lots of farm workers as well. One time, as a
small child, we were making preserves in her Wisconsin kitchen
from her blackberries. I asked her if she could make butter. She said (sighing),
yes, butter, cheese, yogurt, sour cream: but she didn’t have to any more and
she didn’t want to. That said, she was very picky about all those things, and
most did not make the grade, even in the dairy state. I thought of her when I
took my cheese and dairy products classes!

I'm almost afraid to ask lest I drudge up bad feeling lol, but do tell, did you curdle your cream? How did it come out?

It worked beautifully! In addition to using the tartaric acid instead
of lemon juice, I heated the cream/milk very very slowly, in a new larger
double boiler (it is very hard to find a double boiler that will hold 2 quarts
This one is marked 8 cups but that would be to the brim. I used 4 cups cream
and 3 cups whole milk. ). It took almost 45 minutes to come up to 190 F. I did
it while doing other work in the kitchen, so I was not standing over it. I
might have done that too slowly, but I was playing it safe. I stirred very
gently. In addition, I heated the water
the tartaric acid was dissolved in. I dribbled that in while stirring.

The cream/milk did not make the rapid break into whey and “shreds” like
last year. Instead, it slowly formed soft, fluffy curds. Visually like very
small curd cottage cheese. But fluffier.

Most recipes call for immediate draining. If I had done that, I would
have lost most of my volume. A few
called for refrigeration over night, or 10-12 hours first. I did that. Much
more of the cream/milk solution were solids by then.

In the morning of the next day, I poured it into my cloth lined
colander, set over a bowl, and put back in the refrigerator. Mid afternoon (~ 7
hours later), I had a couple of cups of whey. Regardless of what any of the recipes
say, I have always found these to produce a lot of whey. I hung the bag then (outside
the refrigerator) to continue dripping with more pressure. Overnight in the
frig again. I think it has exuded all the whey it will. It is hung now. Squeezing
produces nothing, though it might a bit when it warms up. Total whey is about 3
½ cups, guesstimating, out of 7 cups cream/milk to start with.(BTW, the whey is
delicious to drink. It’s hard to describe the taste. It’s got a slight sour
cream tang)

My daughter and I will be making the tiramisu tonight.

It was perfect! The best cheese and tiramisu I've ever made. It is unbelievably fresh tasting.

Thanx for the update. Good to hear!

Now that we have a collection of great advice, and your example, I'll have to try it soon.

I too like the whey. I drank some while it was still warm and saved the rest. Over the next two days I made my version of English Muffin Loaf, and a large batch of Zucchini Muffins. I normally use soy milk in my baking, but since I had the whey, there was no good reason to not try it out. Both came out excellent!

Maybe in the future I'll graduate to making mozzarella, make the ricotta from the left over whey. Then, if it's possible, bake with the twice-used whey! But, one step at a time.

Interesting! I never tried baking with whey. Use wherever the recipe calls for milk? Though right now I have too many baked things I must use up first.

While I was researching recipes for the ricotta, I had read that you can replace the whey for water in baking and other recipes. I do that with a lot of things. When I make garbanzo beans, I use about a pint, to a quart more water than I have to, then when I make couscous or rice, I use the bean broth instead of water.

As someone who doesn't use a lot of dairy, I am always having to find replacements for milk and eggs. Subbing the whey for milk was a trial, it worked well. However, if you are trying to make a recipe to 'perfection', the fats and proteins in milk can make a difference. Since I usually have that problem using the soy, I rarely make a recipe to perfection lol.

A bit off subject but I made a winter squash soup using soy milk. but the recipe called for heavy cream. To make up for the lack of fat in the soy milk, I just added butter to the soy. YUM!!! Came out wonderful. However, a long time ago, when I was just learning to cook, and was a vegan at the time, I wanted to make a white pasta sauce for my gf and I for dinner. I was using whole wheat pasta, and whole wheat flour to thicken the sauce, but all I had was vanilla soy milk. Oh my. It was horrendous lol. I can usually eat any of my experiments that come out a bit lacking, but this was 'spit-out horrible'! Well, needless to say, although it wasn't as romantic as I'd hoped, that night she and I enjoyed a lovely Chinese take out.

Hopefully someone with much more experience and skill then I will offer the best uses for whey, but I often figure... why not?

If you are making yeast breads you need to be careful how much whey (milk or other dairy products) you add to the bread recipe. There is a protein in the whey (as well as non-fat dry milk and other dairy products), when there is too much dairy in a bread recipe the loaf can have a reduced volume, poor texture, as well as the symmetry and cellular structure can be affected. You will notice a rollercoaster-looking crust and lop-sided loaf if there is too much whey/dairy. This is one time more isn't always better..... I had a recipe for Dill Bread that had a lot of cottage cheese in it and it always had the signs of too much dairy.

You can overcome some of the effects of the whey (or milk) by scalding it. Older recipes called for scalding milk and most people think it was because the milk wasn't pasteurized, but that's not the reason. Bakers realized they got better results when the whey/dairy was heat-treated by holding it at about 180°F to 190°F over a period of time (scalding) to overcome the undesirable properties to a certain degree.

I drain whey from my dairy kefir and make whey-lemonade in the summer. Add some chia seeds to the mixture, maybe some coconut water, and it's better at hydrating and restoring electrolytes than Gatorade. Whey is a good colon cleanser.