...with the homemade yogurt.

I have been making homemade yogurt for Elena now for about a month or two. Once I started offering her dairy products I thought yogurt would be a good choice. I am not a yogurt eater myself, but it is something I really wanted Elena to eat and enjoy - for it's many healthy nutrients (provided you choose the right kind;)).

Being that she is a baby (and a small one), it's important to give her whole milk yogurt for the calories, fat and other obvious nutrients (calcium and protein).

At the grocery store, I can get a quart of plain whole milk yogurt for $4.19. I can't for the life of me find plain whole milk yogurt in those little 6 or 8 ounce cups...I suppose they don't make it that way. The only way I have found the smaller sized containers sold is in a 6 pack of 4-ounce single servings which is a total of 24 ounces of yogurt...and they cost $4.29. By making my own yogurt I save a few bucks. My batch that is culturing as I type will have cost me a grand total of $1.42 for one quart or 32 ounces!

I had vaguely heard of people making their own yogurt, but didn't want to invest in a yogurt maker as we already have enough single use appliances in our house, and we surely don't need another! Because the internet is so awesome, I found a recipe to make homemade yogurt in a crockpot (equally as awesome). Since I already have a crockpot, I decided to give it a whirl and see what happened!

The instructions are pretty simple:

1. Set your crockpot on low.
2. Add 1/2 gallon of milk and let it heat up for 2.5 hours.
3. After 2.5 hours, turn the crockpot off, leave the lid on and let it cool off for 3 hours.
4. After cooling for 3 hours, take out a small amount of the milk (I don't measure...maybe 1/2 a cup) and mix in your starter. Your starter is just a 1/2 cup of store bought plain yogurt (I use a plain low fat variety so that I only have to buy one small container of yogurt). Once you have made one batch of this yogurt successfully, you can set aside a 1/2 cup of it to use as your starter for the next batch you make.
5. Take the starter mixture and add it to the crockpot, stir and recover with the lid.
6. Take your whole crockpot and put it in the oven (TURNED OFF...of course!).
7. Tape a note to your range that says "Do not use oven" - I swear...this even helps ME remember not to use the oven....you'd be amazed at how quickly you forget that you have yogurt in there!
8. Let it "culture" for 8-12 hours. Just leave it in there....no peeking. If you open the door, or take the lid off to peek, it loses "heat" which is necessary to culture the yogurt!
9. Take the crockpot out of the oven, give the yogurt a stir (it should be thick by now) and put it in the fridge. For best results....let it chill in the fridge for 8+ hours before you use it.


Because the yogurt has to culture for such a long period of time, I generally start my yogurt in the early evening and before I go to bed I put the crockpot in the oven and let it culture while we sleep. I finish it up first thing in the morning :)


When the yogurt is finished, I use it to mix with many of Elena's other foods to thin it out...like egg yolks, beans, etc.
In addition, I flavor the yogurt myself with fruit purees. I'd have to say her favorite is blackberry yogurt.
I currently cut the above recipe in half and only make one quart of yogurt since Elena is the only one eating it. I do however have plans to get an ice cream maker and will hopefully use my homemade yogurt to make frozen yogurt. Yum!