By Jean Mansfield, How to Make Cheese It’s still not too late to get your own home-made delights on the table for the holidays. You’ve still got time to make some quick cheeses and have them perfectly matured to share with your family. These are all easy-to-make cheeses and some of first ones you’ll find in How to Make Cheese. Cheesemaking is a wonderful hobby, saving you so much money, and there’s nothing more satisfying than serving your own delicious artisan cheeses. Feta This is my pick – check out my recipe here. It’s easy to make, virtually fool-proof, and it doesn’t take long, but it’s still a ‘real’ cheese you can use to impress your guests. With just four litres of creamy ‘farmhouse’ (4%) milk from the supermarket, you’ll make enough (around 450g+) to get you through the holiday season, although you’ll also need a few specialist ingredients which are easy to find online: a mesophilic starter, a thermophilic starter, lipase, calcium chloride and rennet. That sounds complicated but it’s no different to adding baking soda, baking powder and some spice mix to a cake. Three hours later, your finished feta can go straight into the fridge in salted water to mature without any fuss or bother and will be perfect to eat in just 21 days, although you can eat it earlier if you don’t mind a less flavourful cheese. Have a look online and you’ll find beautiful labels that are free to print off so you can personalise it even further. Camembert Camembert takes three weeks from the day it’s made to grow its fuzzy white coat and look splendid on the festive table. The actual making of the cheese to moulding stage is very simple, again requiring a starter, the bacteria that add flavour and rennet. It does require a little more attention during the maturing process than something like feta but it’s nothing taxing, just opening its container and turning it every so often. Your reward will be a stunningly beautiful addition to your cheeseboard. We mostly see camembert as a small round of cheese, but you can do so much more by using a mould of a similar size but different shape – there are heart-shaped moulds or you could roll your shaped curd in ash for a bit of pizzazz. Halloumi  Halloumi can be made quickly using the fabulous half hour recipe in How to Make Cheese – the only special ingredient is rennet – and makes a rather exciting addition to breakfast the morning after too. You can make it 3-4 days before New Year and then keep it in brine or vacuum pack it to stand in your fridge. Halloumi is great on the barbecue, and very useful for extending the menu for a vegetarian meal too. I use cookie cutters to cut the tofu-like pressed curd into shapes so you have a festive selection of golden brown-cooked halloumi for the children’s breakfast. Cream cheese  Cream cheese can be made just two days beforehand and will last for another two days after the party is over. This is a really versatile cheese to make from four litres of milk (plus a starter and rennet), making you enough soft, delicious cheese for all your dips or to have with crackers. Add a tablespoon of horseradish and whole grain mustard to a cup of homemade cream cheese and you’ll discover it’s addictive – it’s definitely a favourite with the men in my family. But you can do even more. Halve the just-made curd and leave it to drain until it’s more solid, add some fresh herbs and you create a sliceable Boursin-style cheese which makes a wonderful centrepiece. All you need to do is cut the top and bottom from a 440g baked bean or fruit tin. Keep the cut-off lid – watch you don’t cut yourself on the sharp edges – and wash it thoroughly. Stand it upright on a sanitised sushi mat sitting on a chopping board and line it a washed, damp open weave dishcloth. Mix your well-drained, fairly stiff cream cheese with chopped herbs, salt and cracked pepper, then pack the mixture into the lined tin and fold the cloth over the top. Place the tin lid on the top and use a smaller can or a jam jar to press down on it. Lots of milky-looking whey will be expelled and you need to wait until the whey stops dripping. Take off the lid (carefully to avoid the sharp edges), hold the sides of the cloth and carefully lift it upwards. You will have a lovely shaped creamy herbed cheese that will look fresh and very professional. If fresh herbs aren’t your thing, try adding chopped, crystallised ginger or well-drained, chopped maraschino cherries for a gorgeous dessert cheese option. A great take on the traditional cheese ball is to mix your cream cheese with grated cheddar and any other flavourings of your choice, but instead of rolling it in nuts, roll the ball in pomegranate seeds. The jewel-red bedecked cheese is a dramatic addition to any table. Mozzarella You only need 30 minutes to make a fast mozzarella-style cheese in your microwave or on top of stove, and the only specialist ingredient is rennet and citric acid. It’s not a ‘true’ mozzarella but it is a spectacular stringy cheese that will melt deliciously on pizza or can be sliced up and served with tomatoes and basil, drizzled with olive oil. You can shape this mozzarella into small balls or bocconcini and place in oil as a gift also. If you are feeling ambitious, you could easily cook this up on the day and stretch it with your guests. It is wildly fun and exciting and only takes minutes. If you’re thinking ahead for next year, you have time to age a gouda or parmesan made in your own kitchen over the next 12 months and it will really be something to show off at Christmas dinner in 2016. You could write a note in your diary for late August next … Continue reading 5 fabulous cheeses you can make and eat these holidays