These make a great change from eating yoghurts, although they are no more complicated. They are ideal for packed lunches and picnics – no spoons required! You don’t need to have special bottles, just make the yoghurt in a large Pyrex or plastic tub and pour it into glasses to serve, or into sealable beakers for packed lunches.
Once you start making your own yoghurts, you won’t look back. The quality and convenience of making your own yoghurt is just so great. If you’re often making packed lunches, drinking yoghurts are definitely something you want to include in your repertoire, and they’re also great for convenient snacks.
If you’re new to yoghurt making, please read all my general tips on my Homemade Natural Yoghurt Recipe page. See also my recipe for Plain Drinking Yoghurt.
Fruit-flavoured Drinking Yoghurt Recipe
Jump to the brief, printable recipeStarter
First of all, empty your starter into a large jug or bowl.
Your starter can be 150g of natural yoghurt from a previous batch of yoghurts or a commercial yoghurt. Unlike for normal yoghurts, a low-fat starter yoghurt will do for drinking yoghurts, but will generally give a thinner result. Do make sure your starter yoghurt just contains milk – no thickeners, sweetners, etc – and mentions containing live cultures.
Your starter can also be 150ml of whey from straining a previous batch of yoghurts. This is a great way to use up your leftover whey, including fruit-flavoured whey. This also has the advantage of not using up your starter yoghurt for your next batch of eating yoghurts.
This recipe does not create a starter yoghurt itself, so you need to plan for that.
Milk
To the yoghurt, add the required quantity of semi-skimmed UHT milk. Remember you cannot use fresh milk as a replacement in recipes like this. Whole milk will result in a rather too thick result for these drinking yoghurts.
For six 200ml drinking yoghurts, use 900ml milk. For six 200ml bottles and 1 1litre tub, use 1820ml milk.
Flavouring
The flavouring for these yoghurts is simply provided by a fruit syrup of your choice – the kind you add to water to make drinks. This also provides sweetness to the drinking yoghurts so no additional sugar is necessary.
Choice at our local supermarket to this raspberry-flavoured syrup by Lowicz which fortunately we like and is free of glucose-fructose syrup and sweeteners. A couple of times a year we stock up on French groceries, including different syrups. Growing up, we always used Teisseire syrups which come in a vast array of flavours ensuring yoghurt-making was never boring. La Maison Guiot and Moulin de Valdonne are also great, and supermarket own-brands are perfectly adequate if you’re on a budget although they tend to be very sweet and less flavourful. Our favourite flavours are peach, apricot and raspberry.
These types of syrups each come with a recommended dilution level when made into drinks – 1 part syrup to 9 parts water for Lowicz, for example. This means you may need to experiment a little with your chosen syrup brand to find the amount of syrup you need for the strength of flavour you prefer.
If you used a fruit-flavoured whey as your starter – which is already flavoured and sweetened – you need to use less syrup in your mixture.
If this is your first time making this fruit drinking yoghurt, use the quantities I’ve suggested and then adjust the quantity of syrup up or down for future batches depending on how you find it.
finished quantity of yoghurt | starter | amount of syrup |
6 x 200ml bottles (900ml milk) | plain yoghurt | 8 tablespoons |
6 x 200ml bottles (900ml milk) | sweetened, fruit-flavoured whey | 4 tablespoons |
6 x 200ml bottles + 1 1litre tub (1820ml milk) | plain yoghurt | 16 tablespoons |
Add the fruit syrup to you yoghurt mixture and stir very well until evenly combined.
Fermentation
Pour the yoghurt mixture into individual bottles and/or a large tub suitable for your yoghurt maker.
I’m lucky that my Seb Multi-délices yoghurt maker comes with some great purpose-made drinking yoghurt bottles, but I was making drinking yoghurt before we had these. You can ferment the drinking yoghurt in a large tupperware or pyrex tub and then keep it in a jug in the fridge. You can then pour it into individual sealable beakers for packed lunches, etc.
Place the bottles and/or tub into your yoghurt maker, following the manufacturer’s instructions.
Set the yoghurt to ferment for 6 hours.
At the end of the fermentation time, cool the drinking yoghurt for about half to one hour on the kitchen side, then cover and refrigerate for at least three hours before serving. They are best shaken before drinking.
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Printable Fruit Drinking Yoghurt Recipe
Fruit Flavoured Drinking Yoghurt
Equipment
- yoghurt maker
Ingredients
- 150 g natural yoghurt or 150ml whey
- 0.9-1.82 litres semi-skimmed UHT milk (see Notes)
- 8-16 tablespoons fruit syrup
Instructions
- Tip the yoghurt or whey into a large bowl or jug.
- Gradually add the milk (see Notes) to the starter, stirring well as you go.
- Add the fruit syrup (see Notes) to the mixture and stir very well.
- Ladle or pour the mixture into bottles and/or a tub suitable for your yoghurt maker.
- Place the drinking yoghurts in your yoghurt maker, following the manufacturer's instructions.
- Set the fermentation time for 6 hours.
- Cool, then cover and refridgerate.
Notes
Based on 200ml bottles:
- for 6 bottles, use 900ml milk and 8 tablespoons syrup (or to taste)
- for 6 bottles and 1 1litre tub, use 1820ml milk and 240ml syrup (or to taste)
See here for more drinking yoghurt recipes.