I'm a bit late joining this, but have just gone through the same issue, and now realise why some of my past cooking efforts have failed miserably.
As others have noted, the spreadable cheeses here seem to be made spreadable by adding water. This tends to leave things cooked with them a bit....watery.
I've gotten around this by hanging Frischkäse (I use the Migros one) in cheesecloth (available in the baby section of Migros or coop) overnight and giving it a bit of squeezing. That can easily get rid of 20 to 30 percent of the weight in water.
Obviously, this is all a bit of a fuss and only suitable for freaks. But in case there are other freaks out there, hopefully this is helpful.
Gala semi-soft cheese (made by Emmi) is the closest I've found to the American brick-style Philadelphia cream cheese: relatively firm and a bit salty. I've baked several New York-style cheesecakes with success. The drawbacks are that it's a bit expensive to purchase a large amount of it, and it's a pain to remove the metallic wrapping from each portion. (Top tip: remove it while the cheese is straight out of the fridge and still firm, if the cheese softens a bit it gets messy real fast.)
Available at Coop, Micros, and often Denner. Maybe others as well, it's pretty common.
Not sure how much it's changed since this thread was last active but I'm pretty sure that Philadelphia is now generally available, and Kiri a la Creme much more so. I've seen them both in Lidl, so I'm guessing they must not be unusual in the mainstream food shops.
Aaaaargh. That stuff is not proper cream cheese, if you read the whole thread (or know a few things about cream cheese) you'd realize that this has been a problem for a lot of people. They purchase a tub of something called Philadelphia cream cheese (thinking it's the real deal) and use it in a recipe with disastrous results because it is too soft and watery: real cream cheese is relativley firm and comes in a brick shape, similar to butter. It reminds me of the classic debates about whether or not you can purchase brown sugar here: you can buy brown-coloured sugar in standard Swiss shops, but is not at all the same product as is sold in most of the English-speaking world.
Trust me about the Gala recommendation, it works perfectly in recipes requiring standard brick-style cream cheese.
I read the whole thread and I still have a question. Can you give me an example of recipe that doesn't work with, for example Migros Frischkäse?
Personally I really like the taste of it (slightly more sour), so I usually choose it instead of Philadelphia, Moscarpone etc. And it works well in any recipe I have tried, the only thing is, you need to fold it in and not mix with other ingredients.
I am all for a bit of a fuss and only suitable for freaks!
But, tbh, I prefer quark/séré than the alternatives, it's cheaper too. Mix in one philadelphia for firmness and there you go. I know, not fussy nor freaky, but quark is a gem. It's simple and no additives.
Firstly, the Migros fromage frais would probably give okay results in what I call an English-style cheesecake recipe such as this one (so-called English only because it's the first place I ate a non New York-style baked cheesecake). The filling is meant to be relatively moist and light: the cream cheese is mixed with sour cream and eggs and beaten until fluffy before baking.
A New York-style cheesecake (such as this one , my all-time favourite) is made of a huge amount of the heavier/more solid cream cheese, plus a few eggs and sugar. You get best results when baked in a water bath, and the final texture is very dense, not fluffy at all. I know many people who have tried to make this style of cheesecake using the spreadable Philadelphia that is ubiquitous in CH and it simply doesn't work. There is too much moisture for the cake to set properly. Frishkäse would definitely not work either.
I'll say it again, the Gala cheese I mentioned above works perfectly for "real" cheesecake, and would also be suitable for cream cheese frosting (which is terrible if you make it using the spreadable stuff).
I agree. The cream cheese in tubs definitely has a higher liquid content than the brick cream cheese. I made a pumpkin cheesecake today and it turned out perfectly using the weird tub cream cheese, but frosting made with tub cheese is iffy and the powdered sugar/cream cheese ratio is off.
Just adapt the procedure, don't beat the fresh cheese in, but fold it by hand. It will work. If you blend any cream (fresh) cheese long enough, you will get a liquid sauce. It's in the nature of it, but it seems that in the one with more water this process happen faster. This lady here agrees:
And a liitle bit more water will actually made things more compact, not less.
If you wil start buying things from small producers you will soon learn that there are huge differences between products and you always have to adapt something. It's annoying but it's also charm of it.
@bossie big thanks for recipie, I will try it ASAP, I love cheese cake and I love custard, so a combination must be but I will use lemons and not limes as the limes here are mostly tasteless
Thanks for this top tip nejc! I will definitely give it a try the next time I have a need for cream cheese icing. I still wouldn't venture to use fresh cheese in my beloved NY-style cheesecakes, but for recipes that don't require baking this could save me a lot of hassle.
Just learned something new. I usually help the boss with cakes (she's the expert), and our recipe calls for 2 tubs of Philadelphia cheese (we never used anything else), something like 400g of unmelted, unsalted butter, and around 400g of powdered sugar. I never had ANY water/liquid seeping out of the frosting. Maybe the recipe we use somehow adjusted for it?
The Lidl own brand cream cheese costs about half that of the branded Philadelphia and is every bit as good. Usually next to each other in the fridge there.
By draining the water I assume you mean squeezing the cream cheese through a cheese cloth or the like? There's no water in the container, it's just much softer as it is spreadable than the block we used in the US for the icing
It is probably the same process as for making "Greek" yogurt out of ordinary yogurt or preparing ricotta for Gnudi, or faking Labneh out of goat yogurt:
- you put a cheese cloth in a strainer
- you put yogurt / ricotta / fresh cheese in that cheese cloth
- you put it in a fridge, with a bowl underneath, for few hours / overnight for liquid to strain (trickle away?)
You can speed the process by using paper towls, it will work for ricotta or fresh cheese, but not yogurt, as it is too liquid.
btw, my dear English speaker: what is the difference between strainer, sieve and colander and do you drain or strain food in strainer?
I use one of those paper coffee filter papers and a filter coffee holder over a mug to drain and thicken yogurt, over-soft cream cheese. Takes a few hours but works okay.
Just don't attempt to squeeze as the paper filter will burst!
Verb-wise, to drain would mean to remove water from an otherwise solid ingredient, like past, rice, vegetables. To strain would be to separate solids out of a semi-liquid, so you'd strain tea leave out of tea, or in this case strain the fermented milk to separate the curds from the whey.