Nakatsu by JNA Designs

I made some non-dairy yogurt using 3 cans of coconut milk and coconut cream, a container of plain coconut yogurt as my starter culture, and a Salton yogurt maker my mom gave me that we used when I was a kiddo (circa 1974?) The white glass cups didn’t survive but 8 ounce Ball jars work great. I shook up the cans of coconut milk and coconut cream and emptied them into a sauce pan, 3 cans worked out to be 5 cups, and heated to 190 degrees fahrenheit, then cooled to about 111 degrees (the temperature fort the missing thermometer tablespoon that came with the yogurtmaker) and then stirred in the starter culture/yogurt. Filled the jars in the yogurt maker and plugged it in, the dairy yogurt mom used to make had a 24 incubation period, I found images of the instruction manual for the yogurt maker here, and read a blog post on making coconut yogurt which specified a 48 hour incubation, but it actually worked out to be closer to 60 hours because at 48 hours it had a nice tang but was still a little liquidy. I put the lids on and put the yogurt in the refrigerator, and it firmed up nicely, next time I will try 48 hours and see if it firms up enough in the fridge. This morning I put it in a bowl and mixed in some grapefruit habenero marmalade a friend made and it was delicious. Will be making granola next.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Attempt #2: 1st attempt with heating the coconut milk/cream and using coconut yogurt as a starter culture, and my Salton yogurt machine worked great. After reading the Minimalist Baker blog post, I decided to try again, without heating the coconut milk, and using probiotic capsules as the starter. I used 3 cans of coconut milk (no coconut cream this time, they didn’t have any at my grocery) and as the MB recipe had 2 capsules of probiotic to a can of coconut milk, I used 6 capsules for 3 cans. Emptied the capsules and whisked in the powder into room temperature coconut milk, and poured it into my jars and set the yogurt maker to incubate. I’ll check it at 48 hours, I don’t expect it to be quite as thick as I got with the coconut milk/cream combo, but we’ll see. If it doesn’t thicken up, I can add some coconut yogurt as starter, mix and pour back into the jars.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

After refrigerating, yogurt firmed up nicely. Not quite as tart with the probiotics vs. the yogurt starter, but also delicious. Success!