With a simple tool, you can make your own Homemade Vanilla Yogurt from scratch, much easier than you'd think!
Have I mentioned how awesome my blog fairy Mona is? She's pretty amazing. And hilarious. I have a lot of things to thank her for, and now we've added homemade yogurt to that list! She sent us this sweet Yogourmet maker which means now we can make homemade yogurt! With my studly husband about to take on some more serious IronMan training, which will include early morning gym routines, he's already said he wants to switch to a yogurt or cottage cheese breakfast. Yogurt, check. Cottage cheese, next on the list.
So with our awesome new yogourmet and some yogurt cultures I picked up from Homebrew Exchange, I heated up some milk to 180 degrees, cooled it to 115 degrees, added the culture then scrapped out the beans from about 4 vanilla beans and about a tablespoon of our homemade vanilla extract, gave it a good mix, and then put it into the yogourmet to do it's thing. About 12 hrs later, we had yogurt!I removed the yogurt from the yogourmet, transferred it to a couple of large mason jars to refrigerate. After a couple of hours, it was cooled and ready to go and is the perfect topping for my homemade muesli! This first round wasn't as creamy as I'd like, but I didn't have any dry powdered milk to add to thicken it. I also will probably make a sweeter yogurt next time with a natural sweetener like honey or agave. But not bad for our first or soon to be many yogurts!
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1/2 gallon of whole milk
- 1 package of yogurt culture
- 4 vanilla beans*
- 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract*
- OPTIONAL 4-6 tablespoons of Honey / sugar / splenda / other sweetener for a sweeter yogurt
- OPTIONAL 1/2 cup of powdered dry milk to create a thicker creamier yogurt
Instructions
- Slowly heat milk to 180 degrees, stirring often to prevent heating. Once milk is 180 degrees, remove from heat and cool to 115 degrees.
- Add yogurt culture package and stir well.
- Add scraped beans from vanilla beans, vanilla extract, sweetener of choice, and dry milk and mix well.
- Pour milk into Yogourmet container, cover, and let sit for 12 hours.
- After at least 12 hours, transfer yogurt from yogourmet container to a storage container and refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving.
