Awesome Strawberry Quark Cheese Mousse, A Quick, Creamy Dessert

Strawberry Quark Cheese Mousse is a creamy dessert made with sweetened cultured cheese and fruits. A delicious, healthy treat you will love!

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You need to try German style quark desserts to appreciate the wonderful versatility of this German, Austrian and Swiss staple. Forms of quark are also known in a few other European countries under different names. Any German cookbook will have a collection of quark recipes and here is one delicious one you can try. As I’m writing this, strawberry season is starting in my area and so I was inspired to share this quick and easy recipe with you. Read on to learn how to make this delicious dessert!

Learn to make an easy cultured quark cheese from scratch! And if you like this dessert, you’ll love my quark cheese mousse with oranges. For a very quick and easy, non cultured substitute for quark, make queso fresco.

A Delicious German Strawberry Quark Cheese Dessert

If you ever walked into a market in Germany and checked out their dairy case, you might have noticed a large amount of these rectangular or round packages with the word Quark on it. It’s a serious thing in Germany and other European countries, and it’s a shame that Quark is not widely available here in America except by a handful of artisan dairies. Which means it is not easily available to most Americans. 

This is unfortunate. Quark is a super healthy, high protein food with countless uses in the kitchen. Some of these are delicious desserts that can be whipped up quickly and provide high protein delicacies within minutes. My strawberry mousse is one of these. There are ways to dress it up even farther, and I’ll provide a more fancy recipe for ‘Quarkspeise’ soon, but this is the simple version that is quick to make and it’s super tasty. 

Quark is a probiotic cheese that contains live bacteria just like yogurt, and if you’ve made yogurt in the past, you will appreciate that quark is made in a very similar way but it is cultured at room temperature. This makes it even easier than yogurt and you’ll get a great dairy food with lots of live bacteria, which gets strained to yield a soft to firm cheese that we call quark. Give it a try and I’m convinced that you’ll love quark!

Sourcing Quark Or How To Substitute

Try the health food store and you might find quark or maybe fromage blanc. A German ethnic store might also have some quark in stock.

If you don’t have access to Quark, you can make your own very easily if you follow my quark making tutorial. Quark can be full fat, low fat, or sometimes cream is added to make it a ‘Sahnequark’. I used full fat since my goat’s milk doesn’t separate, but it’s delicious with skimmed cow’s milk too (1% or 2% if you get milk from the grocery store).

You can also substitute with the even easier to make queso fresco (a non-cultured 30 minute quick cheese without the probiotics).

If you don’t want to make your own, try this with either low salt, blended cottage cheese or plain Greek yogurt. They will all taste great, but none of them are quite like quark. 

Strawberry Quark Cheese Mousse Recipe

Equipment

Immersion Blender – Or just use a potato masher for pureeing the strawberries. The immersion blender will yield a smoother puree.

Medium bowl – For mixing your dessert.

Quart or pint sized container – For whipping cream

Silicone spatula 

3 serving glasses or bowls

Hand mixer – For whipping the cream

Piping bag – optional for decorating

Ingredients

I always recommend that you use organic ingredients wherever possible for better health.

Quark cheese – Use fresh, unsalted quark, queso fresco, blended low-salt cottage cheese or unflavored Greek yogurt

Strawberries – Fresh strawberries are tastiest, but frozen strawberries work well too. Half of them will be mixed into the quark, the rest are for layering and decoration.

Whipping cream – I use organic heavy cream. 

Honey – If you use raw, unfiltered honey, you’ll get extra health benefits too. If you don’t have honey, you can certainly use cane sugar or maple syrup. 

Milk – Optional. if your quark is very dense, add a few tablespoons of milk to make it more creamy.

Vanilla – Optional.

Instructions For Making Strawberry Quark Cheese Mousse Recipe

Keep out a few pretty Strawberries to decorate your dessert.

Remove the stems and leaves (I like a sharp sided measuring spoon for this). Chop the strawberries and puree half of them.

You should get about 1 cup. Keep the rest for layering in the dessert.

Add the Quark to the pureed strawberries and blend everything well.

Add the honey and vanilla if you use it, blend in

Give it a taste, if your strawberries were not super sweet, you might want to add a little more honey.

Whip the heavy cream until it is very firm but don’t overprocess or you get butter.

Add approximately 2/3 of the whipped cream to the strawberry quark creme.

Fold the whipped cream into the strawberry cream and gently incorporate to make a fluffy mousse. 

Fill the mousse into serving glasses or bowls, layered with chopped strawberries.

At this point, it improves the flavor and thickens if you refrigerate it for an hour or two, or overnight.

To serve, you can pipe a little cream on top and decorate with a strawberry or a few strawberry slices and a mint sprig. 

I like to chill it for a few hours before serving, but it is very good right away too. It will stay delicious for a couple of days in the fridge. A few days longer if you don’t add the fresh strawberry layer. But it’s best if used within two days.

Variations

Dress your quark dessert up by layering with granola, broken lady fingers, pieces of leftover cake, or cookie crumbs. This makes a super healthy dessert that is high in protein. It is also great for Breakfast when layered with granola, and it’s filling and healthy enough for a light lunch. 

Try it with any berries of your choice! Blackberries, blueberries and raspberries work well and a mix is even better. Add more honey to adjust for sweetness if you’re using tart berries, or add less if your berries are super sweet.

Make batches in different colors with strawberries and blueberries for a fourth of July presentation. Keep some of the quark white or use whipping cream for the white. Remember to adjust the honey depending on the sweetness of the berries. 

You can also leave the quark white, by leaving out the pureed berries. Just mix it with honey and maybe a little lemon juice, and fold in the whipping cream. Serve it over whole berries, or fold whole berries into it. There are so many ways to use quark for simple desserts. 

Try quark with peaches, mango, canned mandarin oranges, pineapple, plum compote, or rhubarb compote. Layer or mix it in.

Another tip for a fancy dessert: Bake a sugar cookie pie crust, or use a vanilla wafer crust, spread with plain quark creme (quark, honey, a squirt of lemon juice, and whipped cream) and top with berries for a summer berry pie. Delicious! 

Enjoy Your Strawberry Quark Cheese Mousse!

As you can see, this quark is so versatile and makes delicious desserts and snacks for any occasion. Easy enough to whip up for a few hungry mouths in the afternoon, fancy enough for a valentine’s dessert, and adaptable enough for themed party desserts. Have fun experimenting with quark and you’ll have a healthy, protein rich, and delicious dish to serve to your family and guests! Enjoy!

I would love to hear about it if you think quark is awesome! Let me know in the comments and tell me your favorite way to make this is. And if you have questions, I’ll try my best to answer them promptly. 

Stay tuned for more great recipes and homestead tips and ideas. Subscribe to my Food For Life Garden News today so you don’t miss any new posts!

Other recipes you might like:

Make German Quark cheese – Make authentic German Quark, also called Topfen. A versatile fresh, soft cheese that is a staple in German cooking.

Queso Fresco cheese recipe – The quickest, easiest cheese you’ll ever make and so versatile!

Creamy Quark Dessert With Oranges – Use unsalted queso fresco in place of quark cheese a delicious German dessert, a creamy, luxurious mousse, healthy enough for every day desserts, but fancy enough for special occasions.

Make your own chevre cheese from scratch – How to make super versatile creamy, spreadable cheese that can be used as a dip, or spread, for baking, for savory or sweet shakes, fresh or aged. Replace store bought cream cheese with this healthy version!

Bonnyclabber – What is clabber milk and its uses Learn to make bonnyclabber, the original cheese. Nature’s way of preserving milk. A tasty, creamy cheese that makes a really good frosting for einkorn zucchini bread.

Awesome Uses For Whey – Save the whey! And use it in dozens of ways. You’ll find something to do with whey for every single drop. It’s nutritious, versatile, healthy, and makes great fizzy sodas!

Natural cheese making Process – Make your own mesophilic and thermophilic cheese starter and use it to make cheese the natural way. Make yogurt from scratch with your own homemade starter too.

Cajeta – Make this ultra-delicious, uniquely flavored, goat’s milk based Mexican caramel to use as a topping for ice cream, pancakes, cheese cake, waffels and more. Or use to stuff sandwich cookies, or make frosting!

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Immersion Blender
Quart or pint sized container
Silicone spatula
Hand mixer
Piping bag