Homemade Yogurt

As I've been looking around for ways to trim the grocery budget, yogurt stands out as an obvious choice. At $3 a quart for Nancy's yogurt, it seemed worth figuring out if I could do better.

I hauled the yogurt maker out of Narnia,* and gave it a try. It worked reasonably well, but reminded me why it was consigned to Narnia in the first place -- it makes eight 4-ounce cups, which is way too much fuss and bother.

So I turned to middle Joy to learn how to make yogurt without a special machine. Middle Joy (1975) is the go-to version of The Joy of Cookingfor do-it-yourself back-to-the-land recipes. Middle Joy suggests using the oven, but ours doesn't have a low enough temperature setting. It also suggests just putting the yogurt in a cooler to work its magic. Bingo! We have a beverage cooler that is just the right size to hold a quart canning jar.

Making Yogurt in a Cooler

This recipe is very simple. The only time consuming bit is waiting for the milk to cool.

I have tried using nonfat milk and supplementing with a bit of dry milk powder as a thickening agent, but haven't had very good results, so now I use fresh milk with 1% fat. I don't generally drink milk but, since milk is much cheaper by the gallon, I buy a gallon and freeze the rest for later yogurt making.

I find that yogurt made with yogurt as a starter tastes a bit better than yogurt made with powdered starter. Also, a box of 6 packets of powdered starter costs about as much as 6 yogurt cups. so you might as well get the extra yogurt for your money. If you make yogurt frequently enough, you can use your last batch of yogurt as a starter for the next batch, and not have to buy starter at all.

• 1 quart milk
• yogurt starter (per package instructions) or 2 tablespoons of reasonably fresh yogurt (less than 5 days old) with live cultures

1. Heat the milk to 185-190 degrees F (a digital thermometer with an alarm makes this easy). This takes about 8 minutes.
2. Cool the milk to 110-115 degrees F (this takes roughly half an hour at room temperature).
3. Put starter in a separate cup, mix in a little of the warm milk, add it back to the rest, and mix thoroughly.
4. Pour mixture into a quart canning jar and put in cooler. Add towels on top of the jar to fill up any extra air space inside the cooler.
5. Let cooler sit undisturbed for about 10 hours. (Jostling interferes with yogh-ing).
6. Refrigerate yogurt.

Bread Machine as Yogurt Maker?

Despite the manifold virtues of the cooler system, I wasn't satisfied at first, because it's not particularly easy to get the yogurt out of the tall quart jar. Two wide-mouth pint jars are better for serving but, stacked on top of each other, they're too tall for my cooler. Of course, I didn't discover this until I had them loaded and ready to go.

As I stood in uffish thought, I noticed my bread machine (another fantastic money saver - over time). The jars fit perfectly into the machine's loaf pan. I made a custom program that didn't do any kneading and spent as long as possible on each of the pre-heat and warm cycles. Unfortunately, my particular machine forces you to include a bake cycle in the custom program, and maxes out at 6 hours for the other cycles. So I set my kitchen timer for 6 hours, came back before the bake cycle, restarted the custom program and took the yogurt out after another 4 hours.

I was pleased I could make it work, but the process was too much fuss for me - I'll live with yogurt in a quart jar from now on.


*Narnia is our random term for deep storage of unneeded kitchen wares -- couldn't say why. Neither can we explain why the food processor is called the Gorbachev -- it just is.

Prize-Winning Poetry

Matt recently won a poetry-writing contest on Bent Objects with a sonnet about underpants. If you are not familiar with Bent Objects, go visit - it's one of our favorites. (In general, it has nothing to do with underpants). I had two hours before Matt got home from work to create a cake to celebrate his achievement. This is what I came up with:

Red devil cake from the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts with white frosting and licorice whip accents. The basic concept is sound and ridiculously easy. Bake a circular cake, cut it in half and layer it. Frost with white icing. The execution was not up to my usual standards given the time constraints. If I were to do it again, I would make a whiter, more spreadable frosting (and enough of it!), probably a whipped cream or a cream cheese frosting. I would also freeze the cake for a bit, so that frosting the cut side wouldn't be such a crumby experience. If I were going whole hog, I would apply a crumb coat (thin layer of frosting to trap the crumbs) to the cut side and then put more frosting over it.

Matt's success has gone to his head, and he has decided to embark on a project to write a sonnet a week. Go see his first effort in that project on his new blog, Sonnetized for Your Reflection. It is very funny.

Cherry Harlotty Sherbet

This recipe is in honor of the Yarn Harlot. I had dropped knitting for nearly 20 years, after making Lopi socks (ie slippers) for everyone in my gift circle, and never quite succeeding in getting a sweater the way I wanted it.

Then last summer, during our morning walk, I noticed the path was littered with fruit gunk. Looking up in idle curiosity, I was stunned to discover that we had been walking under sour cherry trees every day for seven years and I had never even noticed. Sour cherries are my central member of the fruit category. We had cherry trees in our yard when I was growing up, and we went to great lengths to pick (and pit!) the cherries for mom to make pie. But sour cherries just don't exist in the stores, so I hadn't had them for years.

We went back with ladders and picked quarts and quarts of the things. Handy tip for extending your reach when picking: bend a coat hanger so you can reach out with the hook to pull the branches closer to you.

I scoured recipe books and the Internet to decide what to make (aside from pie). Somewhere in my researches I happened across this post by the Yarn Harlot. Had never heard of her. Had never heard of knitting blogs. But was charmed by the writing and found a lot of useful information about cherries among the comments.

Still, it was another six months until I took up knitting again, and it wasn't even really the Yarn Harlot's fault I did. But it was indirect peer pressure. All the cool kids at work were knitting, and it looked like a fabulous thing to do during meetings. Then it was time for Christmas travels, when handwork is absolutely mandatory, so I bought some...crochet supplies. Crochet just seemed easier to manage. Easy to pick up and put down, no octopus wrestling. And it's all true. Crochet is very pleasing to do. I just couldn't like the results.

So I dug out the knitting needles and the leftover yarn. And wow, the Internet has changed everything. Knitting is so much more fun now. Everything you could want to learn. All the patterns your heart could desire. And smart, funny, wise, passionate people to help you along the way.

Cherry Harlotty Sherbet
(adapted from 1-2-3 Sherbet, from Arlene J Achterberg of Janesville WI - the original recipe called from strawberries, which are also very tasty)

4 cups fresh cherries, rinsed and pitted (More on pitting in a later post - short answer is Norpro Deluxe Cherry Stoner and dress to mess.)

1 1/2 cups sugar (The original recipe calls for 2 cups, but that was too sweet for me. If you're using very tart cherries, you might want to increase the sugar a little - whatever tastes good to you.)

2 cups buttermilk (I keep dry buttermilk on hand for baking, and that works just fine.)

an indefinable something else (With the ingredients above, the recipe is fantastic, even better than with the strawberries. However, it is not perfect. Which is odd, since the strawberry sherbet was perfect. But each fruit must be measured against its own standards, and my standards for cherries are very high. Preliminary tests suggest that almond extract or Amaretto is probably the missing ingredient when using cherries. I am also thinking of experimenting with toasted almonds, ground very fine. Please send me the results of any of your experiments.)

1. Blend ingredients until smooth (I used a blender, but a food processor would probably work, too). Freeze until firm. The cherry skins will probably not be completely pureed, but I think they add some nice, subtle contrast. (Other family members think they're icky - ah well, more sherbet for me.)
2. After the sherbet is frozen, break into chunks. Mash with a bean masher. (That's probably the ideal implement. I expect a pastry cutter would work, too. Or you might even be able to omit this step if you're using a standing mixer for the next step.)
3. Using an electric mixer, beat until smooth. Freeze again until firm. According to Ms. Achterberg, this step is important for muting the buttermilk taste. I like buttermilk, so that wasn't a worry, but I do think this step is important for the texture.

I was curious about the fat/carbs info on this recipe, since it's clearly radically low fat. According to my amateur calculations, one cup (about 1/6 of the recipe) of the original recipe would run you 228 calories/1 gram fat/ 46 grams carbohydrates/ 3.5 grams protein (I haven't looked into how cherries compare to strawberries, and that's assuming the full two cups of sugar).

Mosaic Turbo Cebulski

a riff by Matt on Mrs. Cebulski's Famous Carrot Cake

(the riff parts are in red)

Cake

Cream until fluffy:
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups oil
4 eggs

Sift together and add:
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 - 3/8 tsp black pepper

Mix well and add:
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup chopped nuts
1 1/2 - 2 ounces grated ginger root

Bake in a 13"x9" pan at 350 degrees for 1 hour (I usually spray the pan with cooking
spray).

Or two greased and waxed papered 9" round cake pans for 40 minutes (turn half way through).

Frosting

Beat together:
1 pound box of confectioner's sugar
8 oz. cream cheese
4 Tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla

Filling

Combine in small saucepan:
1 1/2 cups raisins (packed)
zest of 1/2 lemon
2 Tbsp water

Cover and boil 1-2 minutes. Then puree in blender (stop to punch down a few times).

Topping

candied ginger, sliced thin

Assemble

Allow cake to cool. Spread filling between layers. Frost. Decorate top with candied ginger.