Frozen Yogurt Recipe

If you’re like us, frozen yogurt is one of your favourite treats. But did you know you can make your own tasty frozen yogurt at home at very little cost and without specialised equipment? If you’d like to learn how you can make your own, read on….

Introduction to Frozen Yogurt

Frozen yogurt, frogurt or froyo (other common names) is a milk-based iced treat. It’s typically sweetened with artificial or natural sugars, and flavoured with fruit-themed additives. Typical variants include strawberry, raspberry, passionfruit and traditional vanilla.

Although it’s available in a wide range of variations these days, it was originally concocted as “frogurt” by HP Hood in New England in the early 70′s. During humble beginnings it was sold as a soft serve dessert in a limited range of flavours. In the late 70′s it began to be sold at retailers as a packaged product under the brand-name Humphreez Yogart.

Frozen yogurt was originally devised as a “healthy” alternative to ice-cream. In the early days it was only slightly sweetened, and so tasted much closer to actual yogurt. This lead to complaints from customers who, used to eating ice-cream, found it far too tart for consumption as a dessert food. This lead to extensive sweetening of the frozen yogurt which then took off and was adopted by the mass-market in the early 80′s.

Ingredients

Frozen yogurt is usually made using a combination of a bacteria culture (sometimes a quantity of pre-made yogurt is used for its culture), milk, sugar and form of flavouring (typically fruit-based). The frozen yogurt you find on the mass-market is typically very sweet as the result of the extensive addition of a sweetening agent such as corn-syrup.

The good thing about making your own yogurt is you can make it much healthier by omitting this sweetening. You can also play with different ingredients, adding whole fruits, juices or confectionary as you see fit.

The “Best” Frozen Yogurt Recipe

Although it’s hard to promote a single recipe as the “best” way to make frozen yogurt, here’s a classic vanilla bean frozen yogurt that can be adapted according to your tastes. Feel free to add diced fruit, or (for a more luxurious dessert) chopped chocolate chips or confectionary.

Classic Vanilla-bean Frozen Yogurt

This recipe **does** require an ice-cream maker for best results. If you don’t have one, check out our article on how to make frozen yogurt without a machine for tips on how you can achieve similar results without the specialised equipment.

To make this frozen yogurt, you’ll need:

One and one-half cups plain yogurt
Two thirds of a cup of plain sugar
One and a half cups of evaporated skim milk
A single slightly beaten egg
Two tbsps of corn-syrup
Two tsps of corn starch
A (real) vanilla bean
Two tsps of vanilla extract

Instructions

Using a medium saucepan, combine the plain sugar and the corn starch.
Stirring, tip in the milk, the corn syrup and the slightly beaten egg.
Now cook the mixture. Keep it on a low heat and stir regularly, until it thickens slightly. It should coat the back of a spoon when it’s ready.
When the mixture is ready, take it off the heat and allow it to cool.
Cut the (real) vanilla bean down the middle with a sharp knife. Then use the blade to scrape out the vanilla seeds, dropping them into the mixture. Also add the vanilla extract and the plain yogurt.
Nearly there! Put the mixture into the fridge and allow it to chill.
After a few hours when mixture is cool enough, put it into your ice cream maker. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions.

Make your favorite frozen treat at home