I'm making Neapolitan-style Greek Frozen Yogurt

[jmowreader]

You know what Neapolitan ice cream is--vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. This is going to be kinda like that.

First, I Greek strained a quart of Stonyfield Farm low fat French Vanilla yogurt.

Tomorrow (actually, I need to strain the yogurt some more tomorrow) I'm going to divide the yogurt into thirds, then grate up this bar of Ghirardelli semi-sweet baking chocolate, add it to a third of the yogurt and dump it in the container, then layer a third that's plain on top of that, and finally mix minced fresh strawberries with the other third of the yogurt and layer it on top of the plain vanilla. And then I'm going to put it in the freezer. Alternately, I've got some custard cups that would hold the stuff maybe without the need to freeze it.

[tblue]

1. I'm coming over.

That sounds so yumcious! I didn't know you could make that at home.

[jmowreader]

2. Follow-up one on the yogurt project

Stonyfield yogurt has a shitload of whey in it, you know that? This is Day 2 of the yogurt draining project. The first day I got more whey out of it than I got from the entire straining on the house-brand yogurt I did last time. I put it back in the strainer this morning to finish, and after ten minutes I've got a couple ounces of whey easy. But the yogurt tastes REALLY good. I think I'll get this brand from now on.

[hippywife]

3. I make my own yogurt but

I use a small cup of Stonyfield Whole Milk Yogurt as my starter when I need a fresh one. :hi:

[Kali]

4. I've never frozen yogurt, but you might want to start the freeze in three separate containers

so you can stir a couple times before it gets real hard - at least for ice cream, churning is an important part of the process - otherwise you get a hard brick of solid.

also might want to melt the chocolate and cool to where it is still quite soft to mix or it will likely be more like chocolate chip.

[hippywife]

5. I totally agree with what kali says.

The end result will be much better.

[jmowreader]

8. Next time I do this...

I am going to handle the chocolate in a far different manner.

I have a KitchenAid stand mixer. (Memo to anyone considering buying one: if you don't have enough room on your countertop that the mixer can live there, you won't use it much because this machine is a HUGE pain in the ass to move. But if you can devote counter space to it, you'll use it every day.) I am going to put a quart of yogurt in the bowl, attach the paddle beater, and start it turning slowly--probably setting 1. I'm then going to drizzle melted chocolate into the yogurt.

[applegrove]

6. You can make a really good lemon lime yogurt if you let thaw a vanilla frozen

yogurt for 1/2 and hour. Zest two lemons and two limes. Take a tbsp of each juice. Mix it all into the frozen vanilla yogurt. Refreeze. Yummy.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. What's your address?

You probably can't eat all that stuff by yourself, so out of the goodness of my heart I hereby volunteer to help you.

[Roon]

9. Me too! eom

[jmowreader]

10. Lessons Learned and Plans for Next Time

I ate half the Neapolitan-style Greek Frozen Yogurt last night. As expected, it was delicious, satisfying, highly nutritious and just packed with active lactobacillus cultures.

It was also the approximate consistency of igneous rock.

To make this product better the next time, here's what I am going to do.

1. The first problem I had was starting out with one quart of yogurt. You lose half your volume in the Greek straining process and if you're going to do this you need to go large or go home, so the best bet would be to start with two or three GALLONS of yogurt. By the time it's strained down to half volume, there will still be enough to really do a nice job. (It goes without saying the only way you're going to get that much organic yogurt without having to rob a gas station first is to buy organic milk and a little thing of organic plain yogurt as a starter and make it yourself.)

2. The strawberries were way too coarsely chopped. You gotta have strawberry puree and a few sliced strawberries to make this work--a food processor is best, of course, but you could probably get away with a Slap Chop if you had one. Greek-strain the strawberries too, to keep the juices from thinning out the yogurt. And I think I used WAY too many. Plus, April strawberries have no flavor whatsoever.

3. To avoid the basaltic nature of the current product, I'm going to divide my yogurt into three equal portions and run each one through an ice cream freezer. Make a batch of strawberry frozen yogurt, pack it into a container, freeze it hard, then repeat two more times. Eventually you'll get there. The ideal tool for this is a blast chiller, but I don't have one. (There is a reason Neapolitan ice cream is not generally considered a DIY project.)

4. The chocolate was real gritty because of how it was prepared, as we all expected. I will melt the chocolate and mix it into the yogurt a little at a time. I KNOW you can make chocolate yogurt; it's one of the flavors Stonyfield offers in its Greek yogurt line. WIth ice cream you have some leeway because you cook the product to a custard consistency before freezing it. This is ALREADY that thick, so no cooking is necessary.)

5. No one says Neapolitan ice cream HAS to contain vanilla, strawberry and chocolate stripes, right? There's not a law or anything..."put almonds and walnuts in the middle stripe or make the fruit-flavored stripe out of blueberries and we'll send you to Gitmo"...so why NOT make the middle one almond-rum flavored? It would be good!