One of my longer term goals with food storage is learning how to make cheeses using powdered milk. Don’t laugh too hard. And yes, I think it sounds pretty scary, too. The main obstacle here is that most powdered milk is nonfat—it’s what has the longest shelf life. Unfortunately, the best cheeses are nowhere near nonfat. You’ve gotta have the fat to make good cheese.
As I’ve been playing around with making various soft cheeses, I’ve been using regular heavy cream to provide the fat. However, as I watch the supply chain collapse, I’m not confident that heavy cream will always be available at the grocery store. It’s always good to have other options.
And fortunately, we do have shelf-stable options for whipping cream. My favorite is shelf-stable whipping cream. I get mine at Trader Joe’s, and it usually has a shelf life of 6-12 months. There are other brands out there, but I haven’t tried them. It is real whipping cream. Another possibility is Media Crema. It’s found either in the baking aisle with the other canned milk products or in the Mexican food section of the grocery store. It is quite thick, however, it will not whip up like whipping cream. But it will provide additional butterfat essential to some recipes. And it has a longer shelf life than shelf-stable whipping cream.
(At this point, I should note that I have tried two different brands of powdered heavy cream that I got through Amazon. I was seriously disappointed with both of them. They were expensive and did not smell or taste good.)
In making cheese and some other recipes, you need to have milk or cream with a specific butterfat content for best results. And if you’re trying to do this with powdered milk and a shelf-stable substitute, you might have to do some math. Fortunately, someone else already worked out the formula. Unfortunately, it looks a little difficult, but it’s really not that bad. Honest.
If you want a fat fraction of f, starting from cream with a fat fraction c and milk with a fat fraction of m, then the fraction of cream to use is (f-m)/(c-m).
All you have to do is multiply that by the total volume to get how much cream to use, and then fill in the rest of the total with milk.
For example, if you want to approximate 1 cup of 3.25% whole milk using 36% heavy cream and 0% skim milk, you need (3.25-0)/(36-0) * 1 cup = 0.09 cups of cream, or 1.5 tablespoons. So take 1.5 tablespoons of cream, and add skim milk to reach 1 cup.
Or if you want two cups of 10.5% half and half using 33% whipping cream and 2% milk, you need (10.5-2)/(33-2) * 2 cup = 0.55 cups, or about 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon of cream. So take 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon of cream, and add 2% milk to reach 2 cups.[1]
Unfortunately, there is no set standard for how much butterfat each type of milk or cream product must contain. It varies by country and even by state or region in some areas. Terms vary also. Hopefully, the following list will aid understanding rather than muddy the waters.
|
Milk or cream |
Butterfat content, % |
|
Nonfat (skim) milk |
0.5 |
|
Lowfat milk |
1-2 |
|
Whole milk |
3.25-4 |
|
Half and half |
10.5 |
|
Light cream |
18 |
|
Whipping cream |
30-35 |
|
Heavy (whipping) cream |
36-40 |
|
Butter |
80+ |
Media Crema falls somewhere between half and half and light cream.
Trader Joe’s shelf stable whipping cream is ultra-high temperature pasteurized, which means, unfortunately, that it won’t work for some cheese making recipes.
Following is an example of the mathematical calculations used to add cream to skim milk to yield dairy products with higher fat contents. These approximations work well for me.
|
In a 1 cup measuring cup, add this much whipping cream (33%) |
Fill with skim milk to yield dairy products with the following fat content |
|
1 ½ teaspoons |
1% low-fat milk |
|
1 tablespoon |
2% low-fat milk |
|
2 tablespoons |
3.25% whole milk |
|
1/3 cup |
10.5 (up to 18%) half & half |
|
9 tablespoons |
18% (up to 30%) light cream |
Other substitutes using butter:
Heavy cream substitute for cooking or baking, not whipping: ¼ cup melted unsalted butter + ¾ cup whole milk or half and half.
Half and half substitute: 1 cup whole milk 3% - 1 tablespoon + 4 teaspoons melted unsalted butter.
Links to related posts:
Beyond Milk
Basics of Powdered Milk
Media Crema Sour Cream Substitute
Baking Substitutions
[1] https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/76665/combine-skim-milk-and-cream-to-substitute-for-whole (accessed 12 April 2022).
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