:: yogurt. {round 2} ::

I didn't want to show you round one. I didn't even want to talk about the 1/2 gallon of organic milk that ended up dumped down my drain, ruined. :( So I waited for a success story to blog about. Haha! I believe in being real, though, and want you to rest assured that this is Try #2!!! The first recipe I used relied totally on the yogurt cultures "taking" to get thick. While I am SURE this is the healthiest, most sustainable way to do it.......

This time I used a recipe that called for gelatin. Oh, and I didn't waste money on organic milk, in case of another flop. If we really enjoy this homemade yogurt, I will start using fine ingredients. This makes a LOT! So, even if I buy great, slightly pricey, organic ingredients, it will still work out to be very inexpensive healthy and organic yogurt. I got this recipe from a lady at work!

RECIPE:

1 gal. milk (whole will work better)
2 tbsp. unflavored gelatin
1/2 cu. water
2 cu. sugar (I might cut back on this next time; it's really sweet!)
Dash of vanilla
8 oz. plain yogurt

This is how it went:

 Put gelatin and sugar in a bowl. (I just kind of layered them at this point.)

 Add your wet ingredients: vanilla, water, yogurt. I mixed it up a little, because I wasn't really sure about this step. It seemed to be fine when I used the mixture later. Let this sit while you work on the milk.

 Heat the gallon of milk on the stove. I used pretty high heat. Just make sure you stir often, as milk scorches pretty easily!

 Oh, yes....and use a pot that is large enough! I had to switch once I got my milk on the stove and realized I would not have enough room for my sugar mixture. I used a large stock pot, and this worked out well, because the mixture was very "splashy" when I was adding it in!

 Heat the milk to 190 degrees (which was at right about the boiling point), then remove from heat and cool to 130 degrees. Stir in your yogurt mixture vigorously with a whisk, a little at a time. I found that my mixture had gotten very globby, for lack of a better word, but that once it was in the hot milk, it dissolved nicely, and wasn't an issue.

 When it is mixed in well, put the lid on your pot, and wrap the whole thing in towels to keep it warm. Leave it for 8 hours.

Toward the end, I prepared my containers, and added fruit to the bottom of some of them.

 It was still a little soupy at the end of my 8 hours, which made me nervous. I wasn't sure if it was going to turn out, but I went ahead and put it in my containers anyway. At this point, I did wrap all of the containers up in a towel again, because it didn't seem finished to me. I left them for another hour, but I am not sure it really made a difference.

 This is how much product I got from one batch! I went ahead and put them all in the refrigerator to chill overnight, and they were nice and firm and yogurt-like in the morning! Yay! Success! The only think I think I would do differently is add less sugar. I don't know if this would change the consistency at all, but I thought it was very sweet. Almost more like a custard, really.

This is the breakdown of cost:

1 gallon of milk- $3.09
Unflavored gelatin- $1.25
Water- Free :)
Organic cane sugar- $2.18
Vanilla- .99
Plain Fage Greek yogurt- $2.48

Total cost:$9.99

Yield: 13 containers of various sizes, but probably equal to about 35 individual cups of yogurt. This would be about 29 cents per cup. Now, if I switched to organic milk, my cost would probably be about $13, making it about 37 cents per cup. I don't know about you, but organic yogurt, or even just Greek yogurt, is running around $1 per cup around here. So this is a savings of about $22 based on 35 cups of Greek or organic yogurt. Not bad!

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