Yoghurt for kids

[jkmt]

Hi,
I have now made several batches of yoghurt, but sadly my kids won't eat it. They love shop-bought yoghurt, but don't like the tast of my homemade yoghurt. I have experimented with sugar to sweeten, but still no luck. Does anyone have a yoghurt recipe that suits kids' tastbuds? I have one child who will only eat vanilla yoghurt, while the other loves fruit yoghurts.
Thanks,
Jenny

[cookie1]

Could you stew some fruit and puree it before folding it through the yoghurt. I also love natural yoghurt that has had sultanas left in it overnight. They swell up and sweeten the yoghurt. You can do the same with sliced banana over night.

[jkmt]

Could you stew some fruit and puree it before folding it through the yoghurt. I also love natural yoghurt that has had sultanas left in it overnight. They swell up and sweeten the yoghurt. You can do the same with sliced banana over night.

Still experimenting, without success to date, but I'm determined to crack it. I'm going to try the Cheeselinks 'mild' starter and see whether that is a good base to work from.

[Meagan]

Jenny how old are your kids? Are you wanting to get them on to natural yoghurt? At a healthy kids seminar talk I went to the presenter said that it takes about 2 weeks for kids to adjust their taste buds say from vanilla yoghurt to natural.

If it was me I would be buying natural yoghurt from the shops and mixing it with stewed fruit or fresh blitzed fruit or frozen berries cooked into a couli. Then moving on to home made yoghurt. The other option is making your own with fruit in it and putting it in a store bought yoghurt container    lol good luck 

[jkmt]

Thanks Meagan. I just want to cut down on the shopping bill as yoghurt is a fairly big expense on my grocery bill. My 7-year-old will only eat vanilla yoghurt and is super fussy about most other foods too, so if I can wean him on to a slightly sweetened homemade yoghurt I'll be happy. I had some success with him when I mixed half homemade and half store-bought in his bowl. The 10-year-old is less fussy and loves fruit yoghurts, but hasn't been a fan of what I've produced so far! Some of my yoghurts turn out well set, others not so well set. So I'm going to try ordering a proper culture and work on my incubation technique first, then I'll go back to experimenting with flavours. In the meantime, I eat or freeze the results.

[faffa_70]

My kids all love the natural yoghurt with a small amount of raw honey stirred through it - that could be worth a try as it could work for the both of them.

As painful as it is, once your do crack it you will be glad you persevered with it - good luck 

[zebraa]

My kids only get natural yogurt with maple syrup (and chia seeds if they want). The maple syrup really seems to take the tartness away better then fruit I think.

[Catisa]

has anyone tried adding a few drops of vanilla extract/essance to the yoghurt?

I was thinking about having a crack at making yoghurt, but thought I should check on here for extra advice and info

[faffa_70]

I haven't Catsia, though I did read somewhere to try heating the milk with a vanilla bean in it, leave it in there while the milk is cooling and then remove before setting.

I did mean to say earlier too that if you are using low fat milk or skim milk your yoghurt will be tarter than if your use full cream milk 

[cookie1]

I ddn't know that Kathryn. Thanks.

[pete]

I have tried making dairy free yoghurt without success, any recommendations?

[dee001]

Keen to see if anyone has had success with this. I too just would love to reduce the supermarket bill for Yoghurt.

[CarolineW]

I had the same problem with my kids.  It was solved by accidentally making a batch of jam which was too runny, and stirring it through.  It was like those muller yogurt corners you can buy.  A big hit with all.

Now I deliberately make a batch of runny jam each time I'm making jam, and they can choose which 'syrup' they want today.  DD1 likes to add granola too.

[CarolineW]

I have tried making dairy free yoghurt without success, any recommendations?

I have successfully made lactose free yogurt using lactose free milk and a live natural goat yogurt (which DD2 can tolerate in small quantities).  I then just continue using the lactose free yogurt as the starter.

Having said that, I've read that kefir makes a good non dairy yogurt, I just haven't tried it yet.  It's supposed to work well with coconut milk and soya milk, I'm not sure about the others.

Roughly every 3 batches the kefir crystals need to be fed on milk, though, to keep them healthy.  Then they can be rinsed and used for non dairy again.

[shan_k]

I found this site with tips on how to make homemade yoghurt more like store bought yoghurt.

http://www.divinemind.biz/blog/2009/09/15/yogurt-thickening-techniques/

As another suggestion (that I haven't tried!) we also used to make a cream we called French Cream. We made it exactly the same was as yoghurt (heating the cream to start, then adding the yoghurt starter that we bought from cheese links). We would always leave it for 24 hours (we did this for yogurt too), but we had a dehydrator with a timer so this was very easy to do. After 24 hours, we were left with this gorgeous, glossy looking, slightly tart tasting cream. Was very yummy and for dietary reasons our only alternative to cream! BUT - the point of all this is perhaps you could do a half cream / half yogurt mix to get a much creamier glossier finish? The kids might like it more, and then over time you could reduce the cream content.

Who knows if it will work - I don't see why it wouldn't though.