Em and the Possibilities There are no guarantees in life…only the possibilities

I found Stephanie when someone posted a link to her site on a message board. I have serious crockpot envy now – she has ALL of these to choose from. (And also blogger envy, but that’s a totally different post).

Now. Y’all have heard me rant and fuss about the boys and their eating quirks, and I never ever put the two of these things together until now.

My boys absolutely love yogurt drinks and yogurt tubes.

Lots of people consider their yogurt “failed” if it’s not thick and creamy.

Since thick and creamy is decidedly NOT my goal here, I decided to go for it. If nothing else, I can stick it in the freezer in a popsicle mold.

Stephanie’s yogurt recipe is here – and please dear lawd go and read it. The comments on that post are a wealth of information. BUT!!! I didn’t follow her recipe exactly, I used it as a springboard.

1/2 gallon of whole milk got poured in and started chillin’ warming on low in the crock pot. I used whole milk this time – somewhere along the line I got it in my head that that whole milk makes thicker yogurt. Then I stirred in 1/3 C powdered milk.

I used a thermometer because I’m psychotically skeered of killing my children with good bacteria. I want to make sure the milk reaches 185*F and then goes back down to 110*F.

According to Stephanie, that’s all I need to do: mix it, turn the crockpot on low and wait.

For 2 1/2 hours.

Oh dear lawd help us all, that ain’t happenin’. I can’t just turn on a crock pot and leave it. I have to be stirring, tasting, adjusting….SOMETHING.

So I did two things: I turned the crockpot on high…and saw that Mama was stirring whipping cream into the soup she was making. I poured the rest of the cream into the crockpot (and THEN saw “ultrapastureized”¹ on the box).

Turning the crockpot on high was the right thing to do – we achieved 185 degrees with a decent-enough quickness. But the part that truly annoyed me was the wait for it to drop to 110. Any higher than that and my good bacteria won’t survive. Lower than 105 degrees and the bacteria won’t grow.

You can imagine.

Now I understand why Alton Brown uses a probe thermometer with an alarm…I could set the probe and not worry about going back to check and check and stir and check and hope and pray that the temp gets low enough before it’s time for me to go to school.

At 3:45 pm my lovely milk mixture was 150*F. I have to leave the house at 5pm for school. Do you think it reached the appropriate temp by then?

Of course not.

When I got home (9ish pm) it was 90 degrees. Fully acknowledging that I may end up pouring this stuff down the drain anyway, I turned the crockpot on high and waited for it to get back up to 110 degrees. Once we got there, I pitched in a heaping teaspoon of Multidophilus powder and an envelope of plain gelatin. I wrapped it up in two beach towels and let it sit overnight.

The next morning, it had indeed firmed up, but was still runny enough to qualify for “really thin yogurt”. I scooped out a serving and poured it over some granola and drizzled honey over the top of that.

*yum*

But of course…the boys won’t touch it. It’s not in a tube.

1. ultrapastureized milk is pasteurized at a higher temperature for a longer period to help with shelf stability. It also changes the nature of the proteins in the milk – making it nearly impossible to get yogurt as an end result. [↩]