Frugal Friday: Homemade Yogurt!

My good friend Sarah sent me an email of a great Frugal idea! She made yogurt from scratch! How awesome is that! If you're like me and many moms I know, we are always looking for frugal Organic food!

So, here's the recipe:

• Turn your crock pot to low and pour in 1/2 gallon of milk.
• Heat on low for 2 hours and 30 minutes. (for 2 quart crock pot,  add an extra 15 min. for bigger crockpot)
• Once 2 hours and 30/45  minutes have elapsed turn your crock pot off and unplug it. Let the milk cool in the crock with the lid on for 3 hours.
• After 3 hours remove 1-2 cups of the warmed milk and place in a bowl. To that add 1/2 cup of yogurt with live active cultures and mix very well.
• Pour the yogurt-milk mixture back into the milk and whisk thoroughly.
• Place the cover back on the crock and wrap the entire crock pot in a thick bath towel or two.
• Let it culture overnight, 8-12 hours.
• In the morning stir yogurt (if desired) and store in glass quart jars or a container of your choice.
• For optimum texture, refrigerate for at least 8 hours before using

Total work time for you: about 5-10 min!  the crock does the rest!

The first time you will need to but 1 cup of  plain yogurt (I used the greek plain), after that, you simply take out 1 cup from the batch you made and set aside for the next batch.

after you set aside the cup for the  next batch, you can add different flavors.  I mixed mine with some vanilla extract, and some with frozon blueberries thawed.  

Savings:

the cheapest organic yogurt is about $3/quart (on the cheap side)

I used 1/2 gallon (2 quarts) organic whole milk $3 

basically cuts the yogurt budget in half if not more! and tastes so yummy!