Since sometime around late spring, my favorite brand of yogurt has been on hiatus due to production issues, it's called "Amande." Amande is a vegan non-dairy almond yogurt. Insert sad face here.
I grew up eating dairy yogurt. You know I wasn't raised vegan, although I truly wish I was. In my house, yogurt was our version of dessert and/or a sweet. I stopped eating yogurt when I went vegan, there was no suitable substitute at the time. Then Silk came out with their yogurt, which I also eventually stopped eating quite a while ago when Silk was sold to a dairy conglomerate. Then some other companies began to come out with non-dairy yogurts over time. I'm game, I'll try anything once. I finally settled on WholeSoy yogurt unsweetened for cooking and baking, and then discovered I really like So Delicious coconut yogurt. I'm pretty happy about these products, and they're regular suspects in my refrigerator.
One day on a visit to Ft. Lauderdale, we happened to be in Whole Foods (surprise, surprise). When we go to any Whole Foods or natural market, it's totally about searching for new products, or any products that are vegan that are not regularly available to us in the Keys. I saw something called Amande on the cold case shelves, and reached for it. Although the sugar content was a little higher than I wished it was, I tossed a few in my cart, and went about my business. When I got home the next day, I opened up my very first container of Amande almond yogurt. It was black cherry flavor and it was absolutely divine. Immediately I wished I cleared out the store shelves of the Amande black cherry yogurt, as I knew driving 4 hours back to Ft. Lauderdale for some vegan yogurt was not exactly in the cards. I enjoyed what I had, while I had it and figured that was it for me, forever.
Imagine my surprise when our local natural foods distributor began carrying Amande. I started purchasing it by the case. It was really nice to have on hand, especially considering that sometimes people who stay with us have soy allergies. I began to make little parfaits with the Amande, and on occasion I would use a container of it to bake the moistest muffins on the planet. This all came crashing down when Amande began having production difficulties. At first no information was forthcoming about the out of stocks. Then, finally, news came.... Amande was off-line, and it was going to be a while.
I was devastated. No more almond black cherry yogurt for me. For the record, Amande is STILL off line, with no firm date in site for their new plant to be up and running, with product available. Sigh.
I was making the rounds at the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore one day last week, and saw a box behind the counter with household items that hadn't yet been placed on the shelves. The things were priced, but not displayed. I asked the wonderful and kind Billy "hey, what's that funky little machine, can I please see that thing with the white caps?" and he swiftly brought it to the counter for me. Imagine my surprise when upon inspection I learned it was a yogurt maker. It looked absolutely brand new, even had the instruction booklet tucked inside. It was marked $8.
I decided to make the purchase. The other happy vegan balked. It wasn't the $8, it was the fact that this is a "gadget," and both of us are anti-gadget as gadgets are clutter, and we're both pretty serious anti-clutter people at this point. He chastised me for wanting this gadget. I explained that Amande is off line, and even when I buy non-dairy yogurt wholesale, it is pricey. Plus, considering all the "out of stock" issues we have on many products with the natural food distributors on our little island chain, I decided this would be great because I could have yogurt whenever I wanted, I could make the flavors I needed, and I could control the sugar content. I also knew that if it sucked, I would simply donate the gadget clutter right back to Habitat.
I got my little machine home, and sterilized all the little jars and lids. I looked the machine specs and reviews up on line, and then began to do some research about making non-dairy yogurts at home. I had NO experience with this subject prior to now. I learned that the bacteria in yogurt needs at least a little sugar to feed on while it's percolating. I learned that almond yogurt is the most difficult to get a good final product from in the home version, and I learned that you can use a "starter" for your yogurt culture, probiotic capsules (as long as they had the 2 necessary strains of bacteria to make real yogurt cultures), or (as the last resort) a measured amount of commercially prepared unsweetened vegan yogurt. All I had in my fridge was a container of unsweetened So Delicious coconut yogurt. I figured that would work, until I did a little more research and learned that coconut yogurt is the least desirable for using as a starter, apparently the bacteria in there are weaker than in soy versions. I began to get frustrated with all the apparently conflicting information on the internet (isn't that always the way, the internet is either massive friend or massive foe), and finally decided to just wing it by varying a recipe I found on line. I followed the steps for heating and cooling to specific temperatures, but beyond that, I played around.
The fruits of my labors have been rewarded! I made my very first batch of vegan (coconut) yogurt and I am shocked how good it is! I didn't add any flavorings (beyond the minimum amount of sweetener so the bacteria wouldn't be hungry).
The worst that could have happened if the yogurt maker didn't work well for me was that I'd clean it and donate it back to Habitat. That's not happening. This additional "one trick pony" is moving into a permanent slot in my kitchen. I'm going to experiment with my own almond yogurt. Nothing will be as good as Amande, but until that gets back on line, I'm sad and will try to make my own. And, now I can make my own yogurt and not have to scream "screw you natural food supplier" anymore because of orders that come in with out of stocks (sooooo frustrating!)
Here, in photos, is my first venture into making homemade vegan yogurt with my $8 Euro Cuisine thrift shop electric yogurt maker. Essentially this is the recipe as well, as my measurements and steps are included with the photos.
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| This is what I planned to use for my yogurt, so I took the picture. Then I learned coconut yogurt isn't desirable as a starter. I grabbed 2 of my vegan acidophilus capsules out of the fridge. I used the contents of 1.5 capsules. No idea the amount that is. Remember... I winged it. |
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| Place your non-dairy milk, sweetener and thickener in a saucepan. Whisk constantly over medium heat. I used 2 cans organic low fat coconut milk (another thing... the recipe said "must use full fat" well, my success is proof that this is not true), plus 1T organic fair trade agave, and 1T agar powder. That's it. |
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| Whisk the non-dairy milk, sweetener and thickener constantly until you hit 180 degrees (PS: this commercial grade thermometer is also from the thrift shop, yay it was $2!) |
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| Have your jars sterilized and ready to go. |
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| Once your thermometer hits 180, remove from heat and set aside to cool down to 95 degrees. It took my mixture just under 1 hour to get down to 95. Once you get to 95, whisk in your cultures (whatever you're using) for one and a half minutes. As I said, I used the contents of 1.5 caps of my own vegan probiotic supplement that I take. |
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| After whisking for 1.5 minutes, simply pour the mixture into the jars. |
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| Here you can see 5 jars have the mixture, 2 jars have water. I didn't have enough mix to fill all the jars. The instructions said to fill any unfilled jars with water so things heat evenly. So I did. |
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| I set my machine for 10 hours. Isn't that red light pretty? This thrift shop baby has an auto shut off by the way! |
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| After all was said and done, this morning, I put the caps on the jars, and stashed them in the fridge. When I got home from the gym, this is what I found... vegan coconut yogurt! |
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| I sliced some organic strawberries and mixed with the yogurt. This was my dessert. I loved it! |
If you don't have a yogurt maker, I did see on line that there are ways to do it with NO equipment (you'll need to use your oven on VERY low), or even a crock pot version of yogurt making. If I knew about the crock-pot way, I probably would have tried that first. But, I'm so happy with my little $8 Euro-Cuisine maker I'll stick with this. I'm going to play around with flavors and other non-dairy milks. I'm looking forward to all the different things I can try, my next try will indeed be almond yogurt, no matter that everything I found on line says that's the hardest to make well.
VeganMoFo was the perfect time to stumble upon this dreamy little appliance at my local thrift shop. I love thrift shops, always have, always will. I've gotten some real finds for my kitchen in thrift shops, including restaurant small wares and commercial appliances. Once, I found a commercial Waring juicer for $25. I bought it, still have it. I've used it a few times (despite having a Champion), and loaned it out so far to 3 different people who wanted to try juicing before making the investment.
See you soon as VeganMoFo continues! Thank you for your support and good luck if you have your own Euro-Cuisine!
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