My Fancy Yogurt Maker

My sister called over the weekend to ask me about my yogurt maker. Her birthday is coming up and she said that she wanted a yogurt maker for her birthday, but all the ones that she's found are too expensive, so she was wondering where I got mine.

My yogurt maker consists of the following: two pots put together to make a double-boiler, a candy thermometer, a whisk, a sink full of ice water, an electric blanket and a bath towel.

I made yogurt on Tuesday and here's some pictures of the process so you can see my fancy yogurt maker at work*.

I am heating the milk up to 185 using my two pot double boiler method, with the candy thermometer to check the temperature and the whisk to make sure that there aren't any hot spots.

Now the pot with the milk is in the sink to cool to 110 degrees, so the yogurt cultures can grow.

This is the key to the yogurt-making--the pot is wrapped up in an electric blanket to hold the temperature at 110 degrees. When I read about making yogurt at http://www.makeyourownyogurt.com/ they recommended sitting your pot on a hot plate. I don't have a hot plate, so I decided to try out my first batch with the electric blanket and see if we liked home made yogurt. My intention was to get a hot plate, however the electric blanket works so well that I'll just use this now. My parents, in particular, get a big kick out of the fact that I use a blanket to make yogurt.

And finally, everything gets covered with a towel to hold in the heat for the 7-9 hour process of the cultures growing.

Making yogurt is like having a science experiment in the kitchen and I always enjoyed my science fair projects. My sister is now trying to think up a way to use the heat of Phoenix to make her yogurt, so maybe I'll have pictures of her fancy yogurt maker sometime soon.

*In addition to not having a fancy yogurt maker, I don't have a fancy kitchen. Someday, perhaps...