Crock Pot Yogurt

I used to make my own yogurt all the time. My gas oven has a pilot light and for years it was just the right temp to make yogurt inside. All I had to do was heat up the milk, bring it down to 110 degrees, stir in a little of my old batch, stick it in the oven and voila! Yummy yogurt in the morning. Then a few years ago for some reason the inside temp fell by a couple of degrees and all I could get out of it was sour milk.

Anyway, I've been reading lately about making yogurt in a crock pot, so I decided to try it. First I heated up my milk to 165 degrees. Then I took the top off and stirred it until the temp came down to 110. I got tired of stirring so I cheated and threw in a few ice cubes. Then I folded in some yogurt that I bought from the store,  put the lid back on, took the actual crock part out  of the crock pot and wrapped it in towels. Then I stuck the whole thing in the oven.

I used to put a sign on the oven saying YOGURT INSIDE!!!!! but since I rarely use the oven to cook for just Grampa Tom and I and had no plans to use it the next day, I lived dangerously and skipped the sign.

The next morning I had wonderful yogurt. I decided I wanted to make it into Greek yogurt so I  lined a colander with a flour towel and set it in a big pan so I could drain off the whey. I set this in my refrigerator until the next morning. It made the most awesome, almost cheese like Greek yogurt!

I also had 2 quarts of whey. Not sure what I will use it for. I'm thinking I will try using some of it as a base for a meat marinade. I understand it is pretty good plant food too. If I was still making bread, I'd use it as the liquid, but I've sworn off bread for a while. You can dry the stuff, but I don't want to spend all that money cooking it down so I'm going to just freeze it until I want to use it. 

I decided to try my hand at frozen yogurt. I've been seeing some sites about how to make ice cream without an ice cream freezer. Basically you put your ingredients in a bowl and use a mixer to mix in a bunch of air, then put it in a deep freeze to freeze it quickly. I used my Greek yogurt, an egg, some blueberries and a little bit of stevia. Don't know how it will turn out, but I thought it would be fun.

The grandkids ought to be here tomorrow afternoon. I'll use them as guinea pigs and let you know!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue