Yogurt with Strawberries

I have a serious milk surplus, and I have been overdue for some yogurt making. Last night I finally got down to business. It is really easy, so there is no excuse for my recent laziness. There were some strawberries in my fridge that were not looking so hot, and I decided to makes these into a simple jam for fruit on the bottom yogurt.

I just sliced the strawberries into a pan and put a handful of vanilla-sugar over them, and turned the heat on medium. That's it, although I did occasionally give the pan a shake. The sugar and the juices formed a delicious syrup, and i turned off the heat when it looked thick and sticky.



I remember reading somewhere that yogurt should always be flavored after it is finished, not during the process, but I didn't really think a spoonful of the strawberries on the bottom could hurt anything. There were enough berries for half the yogurt cups, and that seemed like a good test anyhow.



This morning I popped the post-incubated yogurts in the fridge, and ate a strawberry one on my way out of the house. I think what I read was correct - the top was great, but where the yogurt was touching the strawberries, it had kind of a curds and whey gross texture. The strawberries were so delicious that I didn't really care. Next time I will add the berry jam on top at the very end.

One last interesting note - to make yogurt, the milk has to be heated up to about 180, and then cooled to 112 (then add the starter). I was skeptical of this, thinking that it was just to kill something in the milk that I didn't really care about killing. So I looked it up in trusty old Harold McGee's book, On Food and Cooking. It is actually important to heat and cool the milk because it changes the physical property of the milk, and makes it more elastic, more viscous, and less likely to separate to a curds and whey texture.

Basically, I learned from that and the jam thing that I should follow the directions and not be so skeptical. But directions make more sense with some explination!

note 11 June: Kelly had a strawberry yogurt today, she stirred it up - no gross texture! maybe it just needed to chill longer