A spectacular failure

Oh the joys of trying new things! Some friends and I decided to try to make our own cheese. The recipe seemed simple enough, but we should have been tipped off by the 16 pages of trouble-shooting hints. These pictures are a bit out of order. Sorry.

Here is Angie showing off her lovely cheese-like spread.
Here is the milk pulling away from the pan, just as it should.

Here is the step we all reached where our cheese failed to turn into string-like mozzarella and we had to just salt it and pretend we really intended to make ricotta cheese all along.

This picture is to illustrate how much milk went into making our ricotta.

Three of us tried, and three of us failed, all in the same way. The problem, I think, was in our inability to accurately measure the temperature of the milk. We were supposed to add different things in at different temperatures, but our newly purchased thermometer read the temperature of ice water as 40 degrees.

Another problem seemed to be the microwaving step. My cheese was looking good--even a bit stringy--until I stuck it in the microwave (as per the instructions). I then turned into lumpy curds and never recovered. Maybe my microwave is extra powerful, or maybe we were supposed to use a lower power setting. Who knows. Jamie and Shelly were going to try it again at their homes with more accurate thermometers, etc. I'm sure at least one of them will succeed.

Meanwhile, if any of you have successfully made cheese, or happen to see a fatal flaw in our process, please let me know.