I understand that cottage cheese, cream cheese, and ricotta are all quite similar, and much of it has to do with how you handle removing the whey, or what you do with the curds afterwards.
cottage cheese and ricotta, yes, note the clumpy texture. That's what you get when you heat enough and cook the milk with an acid, it clumps into that typical texture.
But cream cheese is more like yogurt. You put the culture in the milk, add some sugar to feed it, heat it until barely warm and store until it thickens and can be separated from the whey by straining. The process is similar for both, just not sure if they use different cultures.
Thanks for mentioning this - the instructions that I'd found for making cream cheese had suggested essentially making ricotta, and running it through a food processor until creamy. While this did produce some sort of cheese, it wasn't what I was looking for. I did more research and just as you said, Cream cheese starts with a yogurt, drains the whey off and then is pressed. Some approaches combine yogurt (made with Milk) and sour cream. Anyway, it's obviously a complex and broad topic. You've gotten me pointed in the right(er) direction.
