Yogurt Making Maiden

This is a recipe for nice thick plain yogurt that our friend showed us how to make. This recipe makes a little over a half gallon of yogurt. (2 Qrts and 1 cup)

Ingrediants:

1/2 Gallon of Milk (we use raw but any will do)

1C of Yogurt

Supplies:

A thick bath towel

A crock pot

2 qrt jars and 1 pint jar

A spoon

A candy thermometer

A large pot

Heat your milk in the pot on the stove over a med low heat. Be careful not to burn, this takes a little time. It is a good practice of patience. Stir regularly.

Clip your candy thermometer to the side of the pot and
heat until the milk reaches *180 degrees F.

Remove from heat and let it sit and cool until it gets down to 110 degrees F.

Stiring will help this go a little faster, but it is another test of patience. :-) (It is important to watch your tempature, because if it's too hot, it will kill the culture in the yogurt. If it gets too cold, it will not go through the proper incubation process to make more yogurt.)

In the mean time, you want to warm water in your crock pot so it is ready when your yogurt is. You want a temapture of about 110-115 degrees. 6 cups of water works well in our pot. Use the candy thermometer to check and adjust your water tempature.

Mix in 1C of yogurt* to the warm milk. Than pour into glass jars. Please ask for help with this part, the pot is still a little hot.

*It is good to use room tempature yogurt so it doesn't cool your milk like it would if it were "fridge cold". If you pulled it out of the fridge when you gathered your ingrediants, that should be fine.

Place your glass jars into a heated crockpot with a water tempature of about 110 degrees. The water should come as high as possible on the pint jar which will only be as high as the liquid in that jar.

Make sure the crock is OFF!


Cover the top of the (unplugged) crock with a heavy bath towel. If it is cold and drafty, you may want to use a second towel to wrap around the outside of the crock to help insulate it. My mom has also read that you can do this in a good cooler with the lid sealed tight, but we have not tried that yet.

Let sit for 12-24 hours. It will get tangier if you let it sit longer. NO PEEKING!


Save that pint jar with a cup of yogurt in it as your starter for your next batch and enjoy the 2 qrts in the next week or two. Store in the refrigerator with a lid on.

You can be a Yogurt Making Maiden too!

Love,

*We have started experimenting with lowering the cooking tempature, since it is so high. This week Hailey cooked it to 170 degrees (instead of 180) and we had a delightfully thick yogurt as usual. We are going to continue our "scientific study" to see how low we can go and keep it thick. We will keep you abreast our findings on this post, so check back if you are interested :-)

Grama's Fruit Cobbler

This is my Grama Carol's recipe, and I make it all the time. You can use any type of fruit, frozen (no need to thaw) or fresh. Some of our favorites have been blueberry, marion berries, peach, blue berry and chocolate chip (reduce sugar!), and now...pineapple.

These are the ingrediants you will need:

1 1/2C flour (we use fresh ground flours, wheat, or spelt usally)

1T baking powder

1/2 tsp of salt

3/4C sugar (We use Rapadura/Sucanot)

6T butter

3/4C fruit, chopped or sliced

1/2C buttermilk or yogurt

Gather all your ingrediants then preheat your oven to 350 degree F.

Get a 9x13 baking dish and put the butter in it and put it in the oven to melt the butter as the oven heats up.

Meanwhile in a medium bowl combine the remaining ingrediants in a bowl, except the fruit.

Mix well with a spoon.

Using hot mitts, and carefully pull the pan out of the oven with the melted butter in it. Set it on top of the stove and carefully pour the batter into the hot baking dish over the melted butter. (do not mix) Than layer the fruit on top of the wet batter, covering the top.

Bake it for 30-45 minutes or until golden.

Its a especially good with a tall glass of milk or vanilla ice cream - but not necessary. :-)

Once you get the hang of it, you will find it only takes about 15 minutes to whip up (plus the cooking time).

Enjoy!