Homemade Maple Vanilla Bean Yogurt

My boys consume a ton of yogurt - yogurt in tubs, cups, tubes, drinks, popsicles, smoothies - you name it, my boys want to it eat it.  As I expected it, yogurt is not difficult to make at home.  It just takes a bit of time.  The added bonus is you get to pick your own flavour combinations.

My first try at homemade yogurt was vanilla bean yogurt with Ian's homemade maple syrup to sweeten it up.  I followed Martha Stewart's recipe for homemade yogurt.

I started by heating up six cups (one bag) of 3.25% milk to 180 degrees F.

I then let it cool back down to 115 degrees F.  I whisked together 1.5 cups of the cooled milk with 5 tbs of plain, store bought yogurt.

I added one vanilla bean and two generous glugs (accurate measurement, I know) of homemade maple syrup.

I poured the mixture into two 1L mason jars, covered the tops with cloth, wrapped them in clean kitchen towels to keep the heat in, and placed them up in our fermentation spot in the kitchen to sit undisturbed for 5 hours.  This is where the recipe ends.

My result after the 5 hour wait (I was very patient) was very runny yogurt.  Good flavour but bad texture.  So I lugged up the dehydrator from the basement storage room and let the yogurt continue to culture at a higher temperature (46 degrees C) in hopes that it would thicken without souring too much.  After four hours in the dehydrator I screwed on lids and put the yogurt in the fridge to cool overnight.  By this point it was past my bedtime so I called it even though the yogurt probably could have cultured even longer.

This morning we had blueberry banana yogurt parfaits for breakfast.

The boys polished huge bowls off without a peep.  Fantastic.  A success in any parent's book.