Hello all!
I'm looking for some ideas and inspiration on things to do with goats' milk. This is my first summer with a milker and aside from making my coffee delicious, I haven't done a whole lot with it. I'd love to try some cheeses, but with just one goat still nursing twins, I'm only pulling in around 1-1.5 cups in the morning. Does anyone have fun ideas for small milk quantities? Is it possible to freeze it for cheesemaking later? I've made lots of yogurt and kefir in my past so I know those are both options, but I'm curious about other products. Buttermilk? Clabber?? What do you guys do?
Replies
Glad it's going well! Thanks for the update. I need to find a soapmaking teacher here!
Kali Sink said:
Hi Naomi! We weaned the boys at just over three months and after a brief excess of milk, our doe has leveled out at about 1.5-2 cups a day. It's our (Honey's and my own) first summer of serious milking so it's been a lot of learning as we go! Still, it's much more milk than we need for our coffee and we've been enjoying lots of goats milk ice cream (thanks Deborah!), queso fresco, and braised veggies. We also have quite a bit frozen at this point so we'll either pull it throughout the winter for coffee, or I'll give soap a try. I met a local goat owner who makes a lot of soap and she offered to give me a lesson.
Well, it's been a little more than two months. Did you find some inspiration?
I didn't like the consistency of our chevre attempts using previously frozen milk, but now that we're pulling in about 3 cups a day, it doesn't take long to accumulate enough for a batch of cheese.
I bake a moderate amount, and the smaller quantities are handy for country bread or biscuits.
And I'm looking forward to trying soap making. Are you interested in this at all? I read that the milk needs to be frozen when you start, so accumulating some milk in the freezer when you just don't want to cook would be a good thing.
I'd be interested to hear what you've gotten up to since your original post. Are your twins weaned or not? Are you getting more milk than before?
Ice cream sounds great! Thanks for sharing.
I'm also curious to know about the consistency of milk that has been previously frozen. Willow will probably begin milking her doe in a few weeks, and I know we won't want to process food more than once a week, with the schedule we're keeping this summer.
Ice cream! I made this recipe specifically for ND milk. If you use other milk, you'll need to sub some cream, or it won't be as creamy. We actually only use 3 cups of milk now because 4 cups would cause the ice cream maker to overflow.