Making yogurt at home is easy. Most of us know this. However, getting your family (and sometimes even yourself!) to actually EAT your homemade yogurt can be a trick, because the flavor and consistency is rarely like what we're used to buying in the store.
This is how you make like-store-bought yogurt cups, with your own pastured milk, no GMOs, and no refined sugar.
Fruit Sauce:
2 c. Berries or fruit cut up into tiny chunks
1/4 c. Water
1 T. Lemon juice
1 tsp. calcium water from Pomona's Universal Pectin
1/2 c. Honey
1/2 tsp. Pomona's Universal Pectin powder
Combine fruit, water, lemon juice, and calcium water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring often. If using un-cut berries, squish them against the side of the pan as they cook to break them up a bit.
While waiting for the fruit to boil, stir the pectin powder into the honey.
Once the fruit is boiling, add the honey/pectin mixture. Return to a boil, stirring constantly, and cook for another minute or two.
Divide the fruit sauce into ten half-pint canning jars. It will take a little more than two tablespoons per jar. Also have an eleventh jar, empty, ready for filling with plain cultured milk.
Yogurt:
1/2 gal. Farm fresh creamline milk
2 T. Tapioca starch powder
2 T. Plain yogurt (either purchased, with live, active cultures, or saved from a previous batch)
In a 3 qt. saucepan, whisk together the milk and tapioca powder. Place on medium heat, and monitor the temperature of the milk with a thermometer, while stirring frequently with the whisk. Heat the milk to 180° F.
Remove from heat, and allow to cool (again, stir frequently to keep a skin from forming on the top of your milk) to 120° F.
While waiting for the milk to cool, spoon the plain yogurt into a small bowl and gently stir to a creamy consistency.
Once the milk has cooled to 120°, add about 1/2 c. of it to the bowl of yogurt. Stir briefly, then pour the yogurt mixture into the pan of warm milk. Stir.
Gently pour your cultured milk into the prepared 1/2 pint jars, over the top of the fruit sauce. There should be enough to fill ten jars with fruit, and one without, which you will save to start your next batch.
Screw lids onto all of the jars.
To incubate:
Place all of your jars into a small styrofoam cooler in such a way that you can put the lid on tightly. If there is any remaining space, add a jar or some glass bottles filled with very hot water to help maintain temperature. Stuff crumpled newspaper into any spaces for insulation, and put the lid on. Tape it down if you have to!
Put the cooler in an undisturbed spot and leave to incubate for 11 hours.
By now, the yogurt should have set up nice and firm over the layer of fruit in the bottom. Transfer it all to the fridge and chill thoroughly before serving.
Notes:
I get Pomona's Universal Pectin from my local natural foods store. If you can't find it locally, Amazon.com is always an option. It is a citrus-derived pectin that uses calcium as a jelling catalyst, rather than sugar. This allows you to use as much or as little of any type of sweetener to make jams and jellies.
I use half the recommended amount of pectin/calcium to make the fruit sauce. This is what keeps it saucy rather than watery or clumpy. One package will last you a very long time.
I use Bob's Red Mill tapioca starch. It's easily available in most stores that have a gluten-free baking selection. Most commercial yogurts use corn starch as a thickener, but as most US corn is GMO or contaminated with GMO pollen, I opt for tapioca starch. The addition of starch for the heating process is what keeps your yogurt from being too watery or soupy - one of the main turnoffs for my family in the whole homemade yogurt process. With the tapioca starch (a simple starch pounded and strained from cassava roots) the yogurt stays thick and creamy even after stirring.
On heating the milk - some people keep their milk raw by only heating to 120° and eliminating the cooling process altogether. Others only heat to minimum pasteurization temp of 165°. I heat to 180° for three reasons. First, I love my raw milk, but I do not trust that it is so clean that I can leave it out for 11 hours in an incubator and not grow bacteria that I don't want. Second, I want the tapioca starch to cook slightly to activate its thickening properties. And third, heating to a bit higher temperature changes the milk proteins enough that it produces a much firmer set and a much milder yogurt flavor.
So, even though I am a proponent of raw fresh milk, I'm not a fan of raw yogurt, and am ok with this compromise.
I used to use commercially prepared jam or fruit spread as a fruit sauce, but straight jam ended up being too solid and clumpy to stir into the yogurt smoothly. I then tried thinning it down with water, but then I had to add more sweetener to get the flavor I was after, and I finally figured it would probably be easier to just make my own sauce. It was.
If you like, you can multiply the batch of fruit sauce and can it for shelf-stable storage, like you would any other fruit jam. That way, you'll have a selection of your favorite flavors at the ready, and can make up a multi-flavor batch of yogurt cups at any time.
If fruit yogurt isn't your thing, you can make vanilla yogurt by adding 1/2 c. Honey to your milk during heating, and 2 tsp. vanilla extract after removing your milk from the heat. A half-gallon of milk will only make about nine yogurt cups without the addition of fruit, though.
Maple syrup can be used in place of honey, if you prefer.
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