Eating the first home made Brie

I love this picture - it makes my first ever Brie look dark and mysterious.  I think that the flavours of this Brie were pretty dark and mysterious as well - also, very buttery.

I had no idea that Brie is just large Camembert.  The flavour difference comes from the length of time to develop the flavours and mould in a larger size. Basically I made my standard Camembert recipe and poured the curds into a larger mould.  I also used a salty water wash rather than rubbing salt directly on the skin after removing the cheese from the mould.  I was curious if this would result in a less salty taste than the one I tend to get on my Camembert.  I do think it is less salty, but equally, I did have a little more trouble with blue dots of mould coming through - perhaps the salty water isn't as effective as repelling bacteria?  I'm not sure, but suspect that I will work it out over successive production.

My biggest problem with this cheese though was obtaining a good audience to sample it!  I'd planned to take it to my daughter's birthday party originally - as one of the children is anaphylactic to dairy products I didn't think it was a great idea to have a large cheeseboard at the adult's food table.  I next took it to my regular Tuesday playgroup.  Except I put the cheese in a plastic grocery bag with some crackers and picked up an identical bag filled with marker pens! Two outings down and so I decided to go ahead and open the cheese at home.  I'm glad that I didn't wait any longer - it was perfectly ripe with a tiny bit of ooze in the middle.  Just lovely.