‘Daddy, can we buy that? Pleeeeeease!’ Elsa is pointing at eight colourful yoghurt packages with fun animations on them. Passing the yoghurt and cereal sections in the supermarket with the kids always means trouble. Those cartoon figures on the boxes do a stellar job of convincing children that their parents should buy them. If I were a kid I would also want them. But now I am the adult and I know that even if they are supposed to contain fruit yoghurt, the yoghurt pots are mostly filled with sugar, preservatives and artificial fruit flavours. Delicious as they might be, we’d rather give our kids a breakfast that sustains them for longer and contains vitamins, and ingredients that won’t turn them into bouncing balls within 15 minutes.
Our homemade fruit-flavoured yoghurt pots might not feature cartoon figures but they do taste a lot like the real (or should I say fake) thing. We mix plain yoghurt with real fruit to get a mix of colours and flavours and store them in small glass jars in the fridge. The trick to making thick, creamy flavoured yoghurts is to mix the flavours in the blender (if they require blending), not the yoghurt. If the yoghurt is mixed in the blender it immediately becomes too liquid.
Depending on the type of yoghurt you use, you’ll get a thicker or runnier consistency. Greek or Turkish yoghurt will give you the creamiest result, but any type of yoghurt will work. If you are making the Strawberry and Vanilla Yoghurt and strawberries are in season, choose fresh ripe ones and organic if possible (strawberries are heavily sprayed). If they are not in season, buy frozen strawberries and thaw them before blending. Frozen fruit and vegetables are picked when ripe and frozen very shortly after being picked, which means they containing a high amount of nutrients compared to the store-bought fresh ones. Luise