Easy Homemade Yogurt!

A couple of years ago I tried to make my own yogurt and it turned out ok. It was a lengthy process of stove-top mess and small mason jars to put it in. I did it once or twice but decided it wasn't worth all the hassle. So when I saw Money Saving Mom's post on Homemade Yogurt in the Crockpot I decided to give it a try- and boy am I glad I did!!! Talk about easy-peasy! And cheap! I did everything she did except I used 1% milk and a small 6 oz container of vanilla yogurt.

             Easy Homemade Yogurt:

• 1/2 gallon milk (Whole milk will make your yogurt thicker, I used 1 %)
• 6 oz plain /vanilla yogurt (anything with live-active cultures will work)
  

Pour the half gallon of milk into your crock pot and turn it on low. Cook it for 2 hours and 45 minutes (I set my timer to remember to turn it off!)

After 2 hours and 45 minutes, turn the crock pot off and let it sit for 3 hours- do not do anything to it.

After 3 hours- spoon a small amount of the milk into a small bowl and add the yogurt to it. Mix together thoroughly. (sorry no pictures of this step!)

Dump this mixture back into the milk in the crock pot and mix it around well.

Put the lid back on your crock pot and wrap the crock pot with a large beach towel or blanket (make sure the crock pot is unplugged and turned off!).

I used one towel to wrap all the way around kinda tight, then placed another one over the whole thing, including the lid.

Let the beach-towel-wrapped crock pot sit for 8-12 hours (or overnight). After 8-12 hours, it should be thickened.

Spoon yogurt into jars or plastic containers and refrigerate a few hours before eating.

This will keep for about one to two weeks in the refrigerator. 

Save a half cup to use as a starter for your next batch of homemade yogurt.

When we go to eat it, the kids cannot eat it plain. I put a small scoop of homemade strawberry jam in the bottom of their bowl then add some yogurt and stir it up. They LOVE it this way!!!

As for me I LOVE the drinkable yogurts which I cannot find many places anymore, so I throw a cup of this yogurt into the blender with a banana and a couple handful's of blueberries and voila a drinkable yogurt!

Yes, we use mason jars as our drinking glasses!!

This was so easy and I will for sure be making this on a weekly basis because that's about how fast we will go through this stuff.

KID APPROVED!!!

I am using big mason jars and some Ziploc re-usable plastic containers to store them in the fridge. 

Here is a cost breakdown on how much money can be saved by making your own:

I was buying the store brand yogurts for the kids to eat at $.40/each. For one snack they would each have 1 so that would be $1.20 per snack for all 3 of them. I made my first batch using a store bought yogurt (wont have to buy more for next time though), and a half gallon of milk. I get milk for $2/gallon. This one batch cost me $1.40. It makes 3 snacks and 2 yogurt drinks for me. The cost of those things retail would be $5.60, so I saved $4.20 by making my own. Next time I make it I wont have to buy the yogurt so it will be $1 a batch. Can't get any better then that!!!! Well maybe if I had my own goat and could use the milk from said goat...

...but well we can't go there...YET!