Christine @ Slowlivingessentials recently made a wonderful cheesecake. Here is her post about it. She used home made labneh and as I have been experimenting once again with making yoghurts this inspired me to make one too!
So here we go: my first home made cheesecake for over ten years…..
Just one slice for me please!
This is how I made mine:
An example of homemade yoghurt
This is just a quick post for those people who seem to end up here looking for info about yoghurt making. The best results I have had so far using the Lakeland electric yoghurt maker which I have been using for about eight weeks is from the following method. Quick to set up, no saucepans of cooling forgotten milk.
Using UHT milk means you skip all that heating it up to a certain temperature and then waiting for it to cool down again, less washing up, so offsetting the carbon footprint of using an electric yoghurt maker, also if you make your own you are reducing your packaging use. Not sure if there is a net gain or loss but I am trying hard here.
Put the 2 tsps of yoghurt in the bottom of the container. Sprinkle the non fat powder on top. Add a little UHT milk. Give it a good stir around. Put container in the electric heater bit. Add the rest of the milk. Put the lid on. And then leave for at least 8 hours, mine seems to take more like 9 hours to go. It’s odd stuff. You look at it and nothing happens for ages and then it goes all of a sudden.
If you don’t have a yoghurt maker then use a wide necked flask or a jug, but you will have to consider how you will keep it warm. A good thermos flask will probably work fine. Yoghurt needs a warm temperature to develop. The lactobacteria and the Streptococcus thermophilus – the organisms that create the yoghurt – are called ‘thermophilic’ (lovers of heat) for that reason. It needs to be kept at 100-degrees Fahrenheit (37-degrees Celsius). It will get more sour the longer it is kept warm, so that is why you chill yoghurt in the fridge once it has developed to the thickness and taste you want. It is worth doing more research on the net if you want to know more about this.
Take it out of the electric heater bit. Let it cool a while. I put mine in the fridge overnight and then put it into clean pyrex containers with snap on lids like these.
You can use the easi yo stuff in it. I have found that it splits. But when it does split, it’s easy enough to strain it through a bit of muslin in a sieve and then you have wonderful whey for baking bread, can’t recommend this too highly, and a thick soft yoghurt that you can use in lots of ways.
Today I made rocket pesto using fresh yoghurt
My sister's recipe for pesto
I used:-
I can’t give you exact quantities because I basically shoved the lot in the blender and mixed and tasted till I got something I liked. You can use any favourite herbs and nuts: this is my sister’s way of making pesto, as she prefers yoghurt to loads of oil, makes it much lighter. I store it in the fridge with a layer of olive oil on the top which reduces the effect of oxidisation.
Pesto in fridge with layer of olive oil on top in recycled container
Spread it on sourdough toast for a quick sandwich, add to pasta, mix into salad dressings…
July 2010 – Made a lovely lime cheesecake with strained yoghurt (labneh) made from rich creamy Jersey/Guernsey milk. Click here to read the post and the recipe.
50 minutes from thought to eating. If you were organized you could probably do it in 30 but I am just not that quick! It finally rained today so now the weather is back to normal, we needed muffins for tea! I have reduced the butter and increased the milk in this recipe by a little as I am trying to cut down on butter.
From a recipe by Diana Bonaparte in Mad about Muffins my favourite muffin book! Loads of other wonderful recipes in here, including B’s all time favourite, mint choc chip muffins and many, many more!
Preheat oven to 170 C Fan. Find muffin tin with 12 compartments, find muffin cases, find the rest of the ingredients and off you go…..
The wet stuff: two parts to this:
Melt 100 grams of dark chocolate and 11o grams of unsalted butter in a pan or the microwave on a low heat just enough that the butter melts and stir until smooth.
In the meantime mix up in a separate bowl:
Then add the butter-chocolate mix to the egg mix, or the other way round, just make sure the chocolate isn’t too hot or you will end up with scrambled eggy bits.
Whizz 2 nuggets of stem ginger, the sort that comes in syrup in a jar, in a food processor, or chop finely and add to the wet mix as above.
The dry stuff:
Sieve these together and mix well in another bowl. You now have one bowl of dry and one bowl of wet ingredients
Filling and topping – weigh these out before you mix the wet and the dry together!
OK, all set! You should have one bowl of wet stuff, one of dry stuff, one little bowl with more chocolate bits in it and a saucer with some slices of ginger.
Fold the dry mix into the wet mix, work quickly, don’t beat it, just mix it enough that the flour has just disappeared, more like folding than beating. The batter can look quite lumpy which is fine! Then quickly fold in the second lot of chocolate bits. Spoon the batter into the paper cases. Put a sliver of stem ginger on top of each one and bake for 20 – 25 minutes. Mine took 25 minutes because I think I made a bit more mixture than I meant to and so the muffins were quite big! They are done when they are well risen and spring back a little when you press them.
Cool on a wire rack but don’t wait too long to eat them, in fact invite someone round for a cuppa and then you can eat two while you are talking to them and no one will notice!
For an easy to print version of this post click here
Zeb Bakes 