Pinterest Challenge - Homemade Yogurt

Yay! The Pinterest Challenge is back! Perhaps you'll remember the fabric box or Halloween costume I made for the fall edition of the Pinterest Challenge. I love the pinterest challenge (hosted by Katie and Sherry!) but I don't really need it. I love Pinterest, and as I've mentioned before, I use it for meal planning all the time. I pin things that I'm likely to actually make - crafts, dinners, and desserts.

The Pinterest Challenge was created to help folks actually complete some projects that they pin. I decided that part of my stay-cation was going to be used completing some projects that had been on the back burner for a while.

All photos in this post were taken and published on Instagram, my new love. I'm so new, I have no idea how to tell you to follow us except that our handle is cookinwiththejohnstons. Follow us and we'll follow you back!

The first project was making my own homemade yogurt. I use about a quart of yogurt a week in my green smoothies. I don't like eating yogurt alone, but do love it in my smoothies. I first read this inspiring post and decided that if I could use the crock pot, I could make yogurt.

Homemade Crockpot Yogurt
1 gallon of 2% milk
1 cup of leftover yogurt
1 tablespoon of honey
1 tablespoon of vanilla
1 tablespoon of brown sugar

I decided to be ambitious and make a whole gallon of yogurt. It was a risky move, since this was my first time doing anything like this. First I poured the milk in the crockpot. I set the crockpot on low for 3 hours. After 3 hours I took the temperature and decided it needed to go longer - I did some research by reading the comments on Money Saving Mom and realized I needed the temperature to get to 180 degrees. It took another 30-45 minutes to get to 180 degrees.

Once I hit that magic number, I turned the crockpot off and let the milk cool to 110 degrees. This took another 2.5 hours or so. At this point I pulled out 2 cups of milk and mixed it with the cup of yogurt starter. I also added in the honey, vanilla, and brown sugar. I would have used all honey, but I only had one tablespoon. I opted to add in the sweeteners after reading this post.

Once the yogurt, milk, and sweeteners were all adequately mixed together, I added them back to the crockpot. I wrapped the whole thing in a towel and put it in the oven with the light on, as per this post. It was about midnight at this point.

When I woke up at 8am (thanks, Wesley!!) I had yogurt! I read a lot of comments to see how I'd be able to tell if it worked - if it smells like sour milk, toss it but if it smells like creamy yogurt, jackpot!

It was about the same thickness of store-bought yogurt, but I decided to strain some of it to make it a little thicker. I took out about 8 cups of thin yogurt and put it in the fridge as is. Then I began the straining process. I used coffee filters over a colander, rice steamer, and other various containers.

After about 3 hours in the fridge, I was left with a whole lot of whey and about 2 quarts of super thick (think Greek) yogurt!

I'm really excited that the yogurt turned out and am excited to do it again! The most difficult part was straining the whey so I don't know if I'll do that again. But it was fun and definitely cheaper than buying yogurt. Once Wesley is eating yogurt, I'll be able to make organic, whole milk yogurt for him at a fraction of the cost - which is awesome! Besides that, I feel so accomplished! I made yogurt!

Be sure to check out my other Pinterest Challenge projects: Crusty Bread and Rocky Road Gluten Free Cookies! And pop over to the lovely hosts of this Pinterest Challenge and check out their projects: Young House Love, Bower Power, Ten June, and Centsational Girl.