Yogurt Experiments... finally successful

Sorry about the blog-lag, but the first month of school is always quite busy... and I can be lazy.. heh heh.

Anyways, a small recap of last year's frustrations!

We had purchased some lamb last year, and it was delicious (from the market.. there is a guy who cooks lamb..). So we wanted to have it "greek-style". I scoured the supermarket looking for plain yogurt... and the only ones I could find were:
a) very runny
b) very sweet

This made my tsatziki sauce taste funny. This made me angry. So it became my mission to make my own yogurt. I tried many different things..

• I tried to incubate it in the oven.
  
• I tried to order starter off the internet (via someone who had a chinese taobao account).
• I tried to steam it....
  

In anycase, they were all failures. Boo. I finally figured out that I probably failed due to two different reasons.

1) The milk in China is high in fat, but low in lactose
2) Temperature regulation was not good enough.

So to conquer these two problems, I came prepared this year. I brought a cooler bag to aid in temperature regulation, and I invested in some skim milk powder.  As you can see from the results, things are pretty good now. It's so fast now for me to do it. I just heat up the milk in the microwave.  Throw in some skim milk powder and some yogurt to start, then I set it up in the cooler bag... and walk away.  8 hours later, I have some yummy-delicious yogurt. Thick, tart, and NOT SWEET! We have already enjoyed the fruits of my labour with the following:

• Tsatziki sauce
• Crab dip
• Yogurt with fruit.

I am looking into using it in baking.... I saw a recipe for something called "Yo-Chee Cheesecake".  Something for a later date I think....