Serves: 6-8
Approx cost: €3
Approx calories (per serving if divided by 6): ~200
Approx preparation and cooking time: 12 hours
Edit: Just as a slight notice, my site is currently not sending out email notifications so if I reply to your comment and you’ve subscribed, you probably won’t be notified – Sorry about that – I’m working on it. – This is now fixed, yay!
Happy Wednesday everyone, and welcome back. If you’re reading this then you can safely assume that, after a few annoying days, I’ve been able to successfully transfer my site and all its contents over from my old host to my new one. My main reason for doing this was that the new host runs Windows servers, while the old one was Linux. For reasons which will soon become clear I needed servers which run Windows so I’m pretty happy with this change, although getting Wordpress working under Windows certainly required a little manipulation. Still – all good now, although if you notice any problems I would be grateful if you could let me know! 🙂
So what have I brewed up for today’s post? Well, I won’t lie – I felt rather lacking in inspiration. My oven is still screwed, which rules out a great deal, it’s my wife’s turn to cook which also means I don’t have an awful lot of say over what gets bought or prepared, and I’ve been rather busy copying over and testing my site. That said, I did read a rather delicious looking post for Watermelon and White Cherry Cream by Kelly from Inspired Edibles. Now, it got me thinking – I didn’t have any ice-cream on hand, nor watermelon or cherries, but I did have a whole load of plain yoghurt and strawberries, so why not make some frozen yoghurt? It’s pretty darn good for a hot day, and super low in fat!
Ingredients
– 8 pots of plain yoghurt
– 1 pack of strawberries
– 2 Passion Fruits (optional)
– 2 tbsps icing sugar (optional)
You’ll also need
– A Food Processor
Instructions
- Start off by opening up the yoghurt and draining off any liquid from the top. To make a more creamy final product you may want to consider straining the yoghurt through some coffee filters or a muslin cloth for an hour or two (or three!) – draining away excess liquid. Empty the yoghurt into the Food Processor’s bowl. Next, divide the strawberries into two piles, one a bit bigger than the other. Cut the tops away from the strawberries and then place the biggest pile in with the yoghurt in the mixer. If using Passion Fruit, also cut these in half and scoop contents in with the yoghurt.
- Blend the mixture until smooth and then cut the smaller pile of remaining strawberries into small pieces. Add these small pieces into the yoghurt and stir well
- Pour the mix into a freezer-safe container and put in the freezer for about 12 hours, stirring well with a fork every few hours to ensure even freezing.
- Freeze longer or a bit less, depending on how “frozen” you like it, and then allow to defrost for 5 minutes or so before spooning out and enjoying!
I've seen similar but using the berries (or other fruits) frozen already. When mixed in the food processor it makes instant yoghourt icecream.
Nice recipe 😀
True – I guess that's one way of speeding up the process a bit. As long as the fruit is decent and not all sloppy and watery it should yield good results 🙂
Charles, thank you for the mention! Happy to be of 'inspiration' 🙂 Meanwhile, your photos get more enticing everyday!! What a gorgeous looking frozen yogurt (and stunning blue bowl – love the contrasting colours – is that pottery/ceramic?). The passion fruit is a perfect addition to the berries – great touch! Despite your lacklustre feeling going in, you sure came out with a fabulous result.
Thanks Kelly – the bowls (I have two) were actually a gift from my sister who lives in China. They're my favourite bowls I have. They have a lovely dark brown outer colour and a blue interior with swirly greens and oranges inside and a kind of cracked glaze near the bottom. Really pretty I think. It reminds me actually – I must ask her if she can get me some more 😀
I did feel better at the end – it was nice to see it all colourful and fresh. Now I'm just feeling annoyed about my new host not sending out emails – yet another hurdle to cross in the trials and tribulations of switching web-servers 🙁
I love that you used fresh strawberries. This frozen yogurt is definitely delicious looking. I love the summer and these type of recipes 🙂
Thanks Kay – I think it would be wonderful with a raspberry and blueberry mix too! Now all I need is for "summer" to actually come back here. It's been raining for the past days and pretty cold too 🙁
No ice cream maker woo hoo! Love the look of those berries!
Thanks Greg. Speaking of ice-cream, the best ice cream I ever had in my life was some vanilla that my mother made. It was so good – Makes me want to try and make my own soon! Hope you're having a good day 🙂
I love vanilla ice cream too… check out Sally's new ice cream maker at Bewitching Kitchen http://bewitchingkitchen.com/ (the chocolate sorbet's pretty inciting too 🙂 )
Mm, makes me think of lemon sorbet – love that stuff, and so simple to make… Lemon juice, sugar and water, pretty much. Yum! Thanks for the link 🙂
A very inspiring idea! So simple, so light, beautiful and refreshing! I should hurry up if I want to make it before the strawberries disappear! (And luckily I can make it without the ice-cream maker!)
Thanks Sissi – we've had rain here non-stop for days so I'm thinking that all the strawberries on the nearby farms have pretty much turned to mush now 🙁 Don't forget to stir well while freezing 🙂
Oh Charles! This looks wonderful! And you just made my kids day. I am definitely going to make this for them (And me – and maybe hubby if there's any left. LOL). I like the idea of adding passion fruit too. Yum! Yum! Yum!
And the new site looks good to me. I can't imagine how labor intensive transferring a site! Whew!
Thanks Kristy – I went for a very low fat version – I think it would be wonderful with a greek or turkish yoghurt and a bit extra sugar too 🙂 Don't forget to stir well while freezing! I ended up having to upload the site data in the end 5 separate times because I kept deleting it by mistake. The whole site is ~500 MB so it wasn't really a speedy process!
Glad you got everything figured out! I was wondering why I wasn't able to comment on one of your posts the other day. I love that you don't have to use an ice cream maker, especially since I don't have one. 🙂 Looks delicious.
Cheers Caroline – it's good to have everything working again, and now I'm back with some inspiration. They say necessity is the mother of all invention! So many times over the past couple of weeks I've thought "ooh, I can make this or that" only to have my dreams smashed when I realise my oven is still non-functional, so I'll be making some oven-free stuff over the next week 🙂
I have one of those Donvier ice cream maker canisters chilling in the freezer and think this would be a great way to make the frozen fruit yogurt. Your recipe is very tempting when we've been experiencing 35-40 deg C weather quite often in July.
On a technical note, I usually have a big container of plain/Balkan style yogurt in the fridge for smoothies, tandoori chicken etc, rather than buying individual servings of plain yogurt (or the flavoured ones) so I wondered whether it might be a good idea to edit your recipe to reflect the amount of yogurt used in more flexible terms than '8 pots of plain yogurt'. 🙂 I had to check the picture you provided to see that they were 125 gm 'pots'.
Same with the 'pack of strawberries'. I'm hoping to use some frozen blueberries instead and am a little iffy on the amount.
Hey there – I think I had pondered this while writing the post, but then I decided that, ultimately, it's not something which requires hard and fast rules on the measuring. Best thing you can do is taste it as you're going along – after all, there's no surer way of getting something you find perfect. You can always smash up the blueberries a bit and then gradually fold in the yoghurt, maybe a cup at a time or so, before reaching the desired flavour.
I don't mind winging things when I'm more familiar with the technique but for the first try I like more exact quantities. 🙂
So, I went with a recipe that required cooking frozen or fresh fruit (in this case 3 cups of frozen blueberries) in a sugar syrup and then mashing the fruit with a potato masher (I used a hand blender), cooling to room temperature and then adding the fruit puree to a combination of yogurt ( 1 1/2 cups) and whole milk (1/2 cup). Since I was a bit low on the amount of yogurt required, I added buttermilk and whipping cream to make up the quantity. I was a bit hasty and didn't let the mixture cool for 4 hrs to refrigerate so I ended up with a more slushy like mixture but it was delicious anyway. I've got another 3 cups in the freezer for tomorrow.
Thanks for the inspiration. I now have to go buy more plain yogurt, strawberries, cherries, peaches … or whatever else inspires me. 🙂
Maybe some popsicle molds at the dollar store.
Mmm, I can imagine the addition of buttermilk and whipping cream made it taste incredible, and I *love* blueberries too – sounds like a success! Let me know if you try other ones… I think cherry would probably be really good! Hope you're having a good weekend 🙂
The combination of yogurt and buttermilk made for a very tart sherbet. I want to make a combination of strawberry/banana but I'm thinking of trying to find some popsicle molds to pour the mixture in. I remember seeing a blog(?) somewhere where someone did layered popsicles using mango and strawberry purees.
Anyway, I was at our local Japanese grocers to pick up some sushi rice (Cal-Rose, Kokuho Rose or Nishiki) and spotted green tea, red bean and ginger ice cream in the freezer section which made me think of a mango-ginger combination. So many flavour combinations, so many calories to avoid.
This isn't QUITE what I remember (where there were 4 or 5 layers) but they look so tasty and use coconut milk as a base.
http://glutenfreewithjudee.blogspot.com/2011/07/m…
[Replying here as it won't let me reply further down]
You know, I think I saw the same blog, possible… and they looked really beautiful, not to mention delicious! Thanks for the link – they look great – and coconut milk is so wonderful, even if it is really high in calories 😀 Oh well, you only live once! I've been meaning to get some orange blossom extract. I feel like rose water and orange blossom extract are something I could really do with having in the house
I found the site with the layered popsicles. They're as gorgeous as I remember.
http://willowbirdbaking.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/…
I have a BIG bottle of rose blossom water in my pantry (as there are a ton of middle eastern grocery stores all around me). I bought it to add to the sugar syrup I made for the rasgulla recipe I tried. I even made my own paneer (indian cheese) to make them with unfortunately they didn't turn out like the ones from the Indian grocery store which made the $4.99 per pound cost of the sweets seem so much reasonable. 🙂
My gulab jamun DID turn out (at least the second batch I fried did). Haven't had any reason to buy orange blossom water yet.
My favourite treat all seasons! 🙂 What yoghurt is this? We have Greek yoghurt here and I’m very happy how close it comes to the one we have in Bulgaria…. all natural. 🙂
Hi Marie – I think in the end I just used “regular”, boring yoghurt. Normally I’d try to use turkish yoghurt (because it’s just omg amazing!) but I have a hard time finding it in France. Greek yoghurt is ok, though not quite as rich as the turkish stuff I find! 🙂
I don’t think I’ve tried Turkish, but now I’m definitely gonna look for it. Have you tried finding it in Arabic stores? Thanks for the tip! 🙂
Thanks Marie – you definitely gotta try it… so thick and creamy. Make tzatziki with it… omg! 😀