Whipped Yogurt
Is yogurt finally culturally correct yet? While I enjoy the tang and sour finish of yogurt, I sometimes have wished the texture was a little lighter on the palate, while not as tart. I also wish yogurt | yoğurt | yoghurt | yogourt | yoghourt, depending on the country of origin, could be used as a topping or as a sauce. The possibilities of using something that had 80% of the properties of yogurt, would be a wonderful addition to the repertoire of a chef. This is what prompted this recipe for Whipped Yogurt.
I live in Sonoma County, that neighbors Marin County. Not far from my house, I see several dairies that work with Straus Family Creamery. The cows live on pristine pastures, breath air, fresh off the ocean near Point Reyes National Park; basically living good lives. The resulting milk | cream is incredible. I also respect Albert Straus, the founder of Straus Family Creamery for his dedication to foster better business practices. As a dairy farmer, he needs a lot of cattle to produce all the milk they capture and transform into all their products (milk, cream, yogurt, ice cream, butter, and sour cream). I encourage you to try these products, as I have made my own butter, yogurt, sour cream, and they make just as good as I can make, if not better.
Differences in Yogurt:
For most of our civilizations, there was one type of yogurt; whole milk yogurt. Milk, with the cream, was cultured (or fermented) to make it last longer than the day or two that milk will last without refrigeration (depending on the climate, where the cow was raised, and the time of year). In the last 40 years, our dairy council has propagated that fat isn’t good for us. Then new products like low fat, reduced fat, non-fat all the way to fat-free products fill the shelves and dairy isles in most stores today. Yet, when looking at the ingredients of these different brands, these products have a long list of ingredients, that are not all that natural. Additives, stabilizers, sugars, fruits, and other chemicals are added to yogurt to help make it 1) shelf-stable 2) taste better and 3) make you buy it. Yet, most of the ingredients that are in most commercially sold yogurt today, making the yogurt more of a pudding or dessert, than actually beneficial to our human bodies.
As yogurt is a fermented product, yeast and bacteria break down different elements of milk, making more digestible for us, giving us a more nutritious product, that just milk. Cheese is also fermented milk, just with a different process and different additives to make all the different styles of cheese. This fermented product brings not just more nutrition, but a probiotic-rich food product, that helps our gut or biome.
Our bodies and digestive system is only designed to process so many calories, from sugar or carbohydrates a day. Most yogurt companies add sugar, in forms of white table sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, and many other artificial sweeteners. These sugar additives are to help cover up the tartness of the yogurt. The problem with adding these sweeteners to yogurt is it neutralizes the probiotic benefits that is one of the many reasons why we consume yogurt. The addition of sugar, the amount used in most of the commercially available yogurt, feeds other bacteria and organisms in our biome, that reduce or negatively affect our overall health. It feeds the wrong bacteria. This is why it is important to read the label of any product you buy. The nutritional breakdown on the back of every commercially made food product is very important to understand. The suggested serving size, the amount of added sugar, the living bacteria, and cultures used to make the product, that you, upon buying it, will ultimately consume.
Those cultures and bacteria eat not just the lactose or milk sugar (lactose can be bought to as a powder, used to sweeten many things, including beer, think Milk Stout | Sweet Stout, as the milk sugar can’t be digested by brewers yeast), but other components of the dairy milk, that creates a finished yogurt. Straus Family Creamery uses a combination of living bacteria in their whole milk Greek Style yogurt: A. ACIDOPHILUS, L. BULGARICUS, S. THERMOPHILUS, and BIFIDOBACTERIUM LACTIS. As Straus does not sell buttermilk, the byproduct of making butter, they use their Buttermilk in their Greek Style yogurt, making the final dairy product rich, creamy, delicious, and adds nutritional benefits over many of the other yogurt brands on the market shelves.
As a comparison, look at what is added to Dannon’s version of Greek-style yogurt, plain: Cultured Grade A Non-Fat Milk, Active Yogurt Cultures L. Bulgaricus & S. Thermophilus. They don’t sell a whole milk version, and this plain flavor is one of 22 other flavors (23 total including plain), so a side by side comparison is not possible. This is why I highly recommend researching your food products, what you feed yourself and your friends | family.
This goes back to using great ingredients to make a better final product. Using their high quality and local cream, whipping it, with or without flavorings, additives and less processing create a better end product. Using a higher quality product and folding it into their Greek-style yogurt creates a delicious, creamy, silky Whipped Yogurt that is wonderfully textural and adds an additional tartness to pancakes, waffles (try my Liege Style Belgian Waffle), aebleskivers, granola. This recipe can also be used as a replacement to whipped cream for a dessert, layering ingredient in a trifle, or blended into a beer curd as a filling or garnish for breakfast or dessert style crêpes.
This recipe is very simple and easy to create. The recipe can also be altered in different ingredient combinations with some of the recipe variations below. It can be sweetened or not. Alternative sweeteners like liquid malt extract (LME), Organic Coconut Palm Sugar
Makes: 1 pint
- 1/3 cup cream, whipping, organic such as Straus Family Creamery
- 1 1/2 cup yogurt, whole, plain or Greek such as Straus Family Creamery Organic Whole Plain European Style Yogurt or Organic Greek Yogurt
- In a metal bowl, add the cold whipping cream (including any flavorings or sweeteners at this point). Cold cream whips to higher peaks. Using a whisk, beat the cream to medium-firm peaks. It should hold firm, but not over whipped.
- Add in the cold yogurt. Using Greek-style yogurt will result in stiffer finished product versus a plain whole milk yogurt. Using a spatula, fold the whipping cream into the yogurt until blended together. Transfer to a bowl or pastry bag, keeping cold until serving.
- This Whipped Yogurt can also be made in advance, refrigerated for up to two days, before it will deflate and the active live cultures begin to consume the cream as a food source.
Whipped Yogurt Recipe Variations:
- Lemon Vanilla Whipped Yogurt: add the juice of 1/2 Meyer lemon with the whipping cream, along with 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract
. Follow the directions.
- Lemon zest or poppy seeds can be folded in at the end as well, for extra texture and pop.
- Vanilla Whipped Yogurt Topping: Add 2 tablespoons of Vanilla Bean Infused Sugar.
- Hopped Whipped Yogurt: Use 2 tablespoon Hopped Sugar with the cream and whip.
. Follow the directions.
More Recipes Using Straus Family Creamery Products:
