Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Making coffee yogurt

We eat a serious amount of yogurt in this house. Being mostly vegetarian, it's a big source of protein for us. Between the four of us eating almost a serving each per day, it adds up. It comes to probably 20+ containers of yogurt a week. I always joke about the "wall of yogurt" travelling down the conveyor belt at the grocery store. The number of plastic containers going in the recycling was starting to unnerve me, as well as the cost (Brown Cow is not the cheapest brand but I love it).

Well, inspired by my fabulous sister-in-law, I decided to start making my own yogurt, which I've been doing for a couple of weeks now. I've been tinkering with the recipes to get it to a consistency that we like, but I think I've finally figured it out.

I started out making plain and strawberry, but now I'm hooked on making coffee yogurt. So, for your reading enjoyment here's how I go about it.

First of all, you don't really need a yogurt maker, but keeping a steady temperature for 6 - 8 hours is difficult to say the least, and I'm too lazy to watch my yogurt grow all day. After doing some research I decided to go with the Euro Cuisine yogurt maker. It comes with individual glass (reusable!) jars that double as serving containers so you don't need to dig it out of a quart size container. Plus you can mix up different flavors if you want in one batch. I highly recommend it.

The recipe I've been using for the coffee yogurt is as follows:

1 quart of whole milk (heat on the stovetop to about 200 degrees F)
2 T sugar (you can use honey or maple syrup instead)
2 T instant espresso (I use Medaglia D'Oro)

Mix the above three ingredients together after you take the milk off the stove. When it cools to room temperature (or about 95 degrees F), blend in:

6 oz plain yogurt (whole, lowfat or nonfat -- depending on how much fat you like)

This last step is critical. You need a yogurt "starter" to grow more yogurt.

You can use whatever percentage milkfat you want, we like ours creamy so we go with the whole milk.

After mixing this all together, pour into your yogurt maker and, depending on manufacturer's directions, "heat" the yogurt. 8 hours works best in ours.

Enjoy! And don't forget the granola...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I also enjoy making yogurt but my method is a lot easier. I use a 2 quart thermos which I preheat with hot water from the tap. Meanwhile I heat my milk (2 quarts) up to 110 degrees (it isn't neccasary to pastuerize it which is what the higher heat does- that only kills a lot of the good bacteria) then add 1/4 cup of starter (yogurt with active culture) stir it together and then empty the hot water out of the thermos and put the yogurt mixture in. Put the lid on and let it sit undisturbed at room tempature 6-8 hours and then place in the fridge overnight. It is then ready to go. In the summer time I use goats milk as that is what we have, in the winter I actually use dry milk and then I use the same thermos system but just mix 8 cups warm water, 4 cups dry milk (this makes it nice and thick) and 1/4 cup starter. You don't have to heat it on the stove at all.
Lately I have been making a lot of smoothies. I mix yogurt, fresh fruit, milk and a little vanilla icecream (which gives the sweetener and a little flavor). We have tried Raspberry, banana, strawberry and Juneberry so far. They are wonderful!!

Anonymous said...

Crunchy,
I'm in the kitchen making marmalade and I'm in the slow, waiting phase, so I thought I'd check out how the Crunchy Chicken came to be.

This recipe sounds fabulous. I'll try it! We used to make our own yoghurt, and then moved last year and only recently decided it was time to get back to it. Our yoghurt was $5.09 last time we bought it! Yikes! Coffee yoghurt sounds perfect.

Andrea said...

I enjoy Brown Cows coffee yogurt very much and we also make our own plain yogurt, however I had no idea how to make the coffee yogurt - your recipe sounds great and I will try it out :-).

Anonymous said...

Can you tell me if you disolve the coffee in hot water or whether you use them in the mix without adding any extra water. And have you tried using coffee from an esspresso maker?

Thanks for you help!
Dominique

Crunchy Chicken said...

I just put it in the milk once it's heated up. I haven't tried using it with water since I think it would make the yogurt really watery.

Anonymous said...

Have you tried heating the milk in the microwave and if so, how long does it take to reach the correct temperature?
Thank you and I can't wait to try this delicious recipe.

Crunchy Chicken said...

Anonymous - No, I haven't tried it in the microwave. I suspect it depends on the power of your microwave as to how long it takes to bring it up to temperature. But I wouldn't recommend it since the temp can rise too quickly in the microwave.