Homemade Yogurt

I made a batch of homemade yogurt a week or two ago, and it was a total flop. So I tried again, and it turned out great! I think the difference was that this time I used a thermometer so I know the temps were right. If you are interested, here's what I did. I made an entire gallon because we eat a LOT of yogurt, but if you only wanted to make a half gallon you would just halve everything.

In a large pan, heat a gallon of milk to between 160 and 180 degrees.

Allow it to cool to 110. While it is cooling, whisk together 1 cup of yogurt and 1 cup of powdered milk. When the milk has cooled add some to the bowl and whisk, then add back to the pot of milk and whisk again. Pour into pre-warmed crockpot, cover and wrap in towels, and put in slightly warmed oven for 8-12 hours. Then refrigerate to set.

Ta-da! Yummy yogurt! For mine, I used 2% milk and plain yogurt. Make sure that your yogurt has active cultures in it or it won't work!

After I made the yogurt I thought I'd make some go-gurt treats for my little man and some frozen yogurt for me. I got the go-gurt idea off a blog somewhere a long time ago, but I can't remember where!

Some of the yogurt I mixed with chocolate pudding mix.

For the rest, I pureed strawberries.

The two blue lidded containers are my strawberry and chocolate frozen yogurt. The orange lidded container is 1 cup of plain yogurt for starter in the next batch. Plain yogurt is also a healthy substitute for sour cream in recipes!

Finally, a pan of chocolate and strawberry gogurts! Just measure about a half cup into little snack ziplocks, fold over, tape, and freeze. Shane really likes them but they start to hurt his teeth after a minute, so I might wait to do these again until he is older. Or until the summer!

Finally a big container of strawberry yogurt for us to eat for breakfast pretty much every day!

And here is the little dude who "helped" with a lot of it.