Yoghurt with mixed berry coulis

Yoghurt with mixed berry coulis

There are so many different methods to make yoghurt, and I have tried a lot of them since getting my thermomix. I used to make yoghurt with my Easiyo yoghurt maker before that, but I do prefer to know what I am putting in it, and making it from scratch is a lot cheaper. Especially since you only need to keep as little as a 1/4 of a cup of your batch to use as your next starter, depending on which method you follow.

The TM5 comes with 3 automated recipes, one of these being for yoghurt. It takes 8 hours, with the mixture being kept at a constant temperature of 37 degrees for most of that time. The resulting yoghurt is more of a pouring yoghurt, suitable for putting on muesli, or adding to smoothies. However, because it takes 8 hours, I can't use my TM for anything else while it is incubating.

It was only a few days ago I read the recipe for yoghurt in the basic cookbook - the manual version. This required incubating in the thermoserver, which is much better. There are also some variations at the bottom of the recipe that I had never noticed before: Sweetened yoghurt; creamy yoghurt; fruit yoghurt and thick set yoghurt. I decided to try out the thick set sweetened yoghurt, and also to make some mixed berry coulis to make a flavoured yoghurt, using the fruit coulis recipe, also from the BCB.

The recipe for thick set yoghurt said to leave the yoghurt to incubate for 5 to 7 hours. I checked it after 5 hours and it was still very runny. At this stage it was already 10.30pm. It was a very cold night in Perth last night, so I decided there would be no problems leaving it out overnight wrapped in a blanket and seeing how thick it was in the morning. This worked out really well. The yoghurt was really thick, as you can see here.

Plain yoghurt - thick set

I made the coulis this afternoon. The coulis doesn't have as much sugar as jam, so its not really something you can store in the fridge for a long period. I store it in a glass jar in the fridge, and it will be good for about a week.

Fruit coulis - mixed berry

Once the yoghurt had cooled down in the fridge, I split it into 2 containers, one for plain sweetened, and the other I would be able to flavour with the coulis. I probably only needed to add in about a third of the coulis to the 500g of yoghurt. I mixed it together well, to make a pink yoghurt. It thins the yoghurt down a little bit. If you wanted to you could chop up some fresh berries and mix them through as well. Another option could be just to keep the yoghurt and coulis separate and swirl it through in a bowl when you are about to eat a serve.

We do go through yoghurt quite quickly, so I know the remaining coulis won't go to waste. It can also be used as a sauce on desserts or over icecream.

Overall, I was quite happy with the outcome of this yoghurt, although I do think it is a bit fiddly due to the heating up, waiting for it to cool, then heating again. There are a few other faster ways of making yoghurt to a similar consistency, however I will go through those the next time I make yoghurt...which will probably be in the next four days or so!

Happy thermomixing!