Selfsufficientish.com

i bought a hand run cream separator and im about to test it out for the first time.

my question is how much cream ( roughly ) can you get from 1 litre of whole cows milk?

we dont have any cows ( no space to keep them ) but we're thinking of getting dairy goats in the future.
but for now we're getting raw milk delivered in the morning, 1.5 litres every other day.

im thinking its not going to be much cream from just 1.5 litres, but ill stick it in the freezer and keep adding to it until i have enough to use for a cake or maybe ice cream.....

iv got the milk boiled and cooling down just now, ready to get separated!

they dont sell fresh cream here in Macedonia, which is completely mad IMO. all of the cakes in the shops are all artificial crap.
they use this stuff called 'shlak' which is this white powder stuff in a packet that you add to milk and whisk it up till it looks like cream and put it on the cakes. god knows whats in it, nothing natural thats for sure. and you can buy so called 'cream' in the supermarket fridge section, but when you look at the ingredients it doesnt even contain milk! says its made from vegetable fat. must be vegan 'cream'. certainly not something i would ever eat, or want to feed to my kids!

that was one of the biggest surprises to me coming here, i thought being in the Mediterranean region they would be all about fresh food, lots of fruit and veg and healthy stuff, but its like the complete opposite. everyone's dieing young from bowel cancer from eating too much meat and processed foods and fats. its really quite bizarre because when i lived in Greece, which borders with Macedonia, it was so easy to have vegetarian options in the tavernas, there was so much variety of fresh vegetable dishes to choose from. i thought here would be the same but evidently not!

The amount of cream you'll get from a liter of milk depends on the breed of cow who produced the milk. Some give a lot more cream than others. If it is raw cow's milk, you probably don't even really need a separator. Just skim the cream off the top after it's set for a bit. Goat's milk is naturally homogenized, though, that doesn't get cream floating up to the top.

My neighbors who keep goats say the Nubian variety is if you want milk and the other goat varieties are for folks who want to make cheese. Their raw Nubian goats milk tastes very close to commercial pasteurized and homogenized cow's milk. Their raw cow's milk - a Guernsey - isn't very much like grocery store milk at all. It tastes similar although more like half-n-half than mere milk but the cream separates very quickly.

They have that horrible vegetable oil cream stuff here too. It's really quite vile.

good luck with cream from milk. Keep us informed about how you get on :)

Roughly, depending on the level of fat in the original milk and the efficiency of separation, 80 to 120ml of double cream (about 50% milk fat), 110 to 170ml whipping cream (35% fat), 200 to 300ml single cream (about 20% fat) for each litre whole milk. Fat level in the original milk is dependant on the breed of cow and the phase of lactation.

ah, just found this post and would be interested to hear more of the results from your cream separator Demi, what results did you get? No fresh cream here in greece either you know, it's all uht weird stuff. i miss real cream but i would have issues with using local cows milk as they don't usually see the light of day. actually, is the cream content not dependent on the richness of the feed, or lack of as for those here. What do they feed barn kept dairy cows?? Sorry i'm going off topic.... Can't you get cream from goat's milk?

I know what you mean Demi, I had the same suprise whan I came here!

The cream seporator works but it took a lot of trail and error as the instructions are in Russian with really bad english transtation which was really confusing. I was in contact with the seller i got it from off ebay and she was really helpfull and offered to send me a new one if i couldnt get it to work. But i got it eventually, i had it set too thick so the cream was all getting stuck inside on the disks with hardly any or none comming out the spout. It is supposed to be screwed down onto a table ( permanantly ) so it doesn't move when you're turning the handle, but i don't have a table i can screw it onto at the moment so once i figured out how to use it it just been sitting in the kitchen since and iv just been skimming the milk with a slotted spoon. The cream is delicious though and i either eat it right away with fruit or if iv made a cake, or i save it in the freezer adding to it until iv got a lot then iv made butter and ice cream from it. Only problem with skimming it this way is that is gets all lumpy because a skin forms on top when its cooling down after being boiled to steralize it. With the cream seporator you boil the milk then put it though the seporator before its cooled down too much and that removes any lumps and makes a smoother cream.

I can't undersatand why they don't sell fresh cream here They're really missing out!