As I mentioned last week, we have issues with breakfast. I'm not a morning person and my children, crazy little buggers, like to eat at the crack of dawn.
So, I've been earnestly seeking quick healthy alternatives to high fructose cornsyrup, either toasted or in a bowl.
So, when I came across homemade yogurt, I had to give it a go.
It was easier than I imagined, and actually tastes really great!
Here's the recipe that worked for us:
Heat your oven to around 100 degrees. (for us, this means turning the dial about a half inch before any actual numbers show up)
8 cups warm tap water
4 cups instant nonfat dry milk
6 tablespoons store-bought, plain yogurt with active yogurt cultures. You can freeze the rest of the store bought yogurt in ice cube trays to use in later homemade batches. We use Stoneyfield Farms Organic Plain Yogurt.
In a large saucepan combine the tap water and dry milk powder. Stir well until all the dry milk is dissolved. Heat the milk over medium low heat until it reaches 180°. This kills off any competeing bacteria so that the milk will respond better to the yogurt cultures. Remove from the stove and allow to cool to 115°. If the milk is any hotter than this then it will kill off the yogurt cultures.
Add the store-bought plain yogurt to the warm milk. Stir it up until the store-bought yogurt is dissolved completely.
Turn your oven off.
Carefully pour the mixture into a very clean canning jars and put on the tops. Put all the jars in a shallow pan, and place in the oven overnight. The next morning, check the consistency. Sometimes, if ours doesn't seem set up enough, I'll turn the oven back on to heat it a little, then turn it off and give the yogurt a few more hours.
I've left our yogurt to incubate for as long as 15 hours.
Once the yogurt is set up pretty well, pop the jars in the fridge to let them chill. We add jam, honey, maple syrup, fruit or granola to ours after we put it in the serving bowls. Adding fixin's to the big jars has always wrecked the consistency for me.
Try it! It's delicious, and blissfully free of corn syrup! Plus, my kids think I'm a super rock star every time I make it. They had no idea that a regular old mom could actually MAKE yogurt! Frankly, neither did I!
