How to make homemade hummus

                As you know, I am a fan of making homemade food when I can. I have wanted to make hummus for a few months already. One of the ingredients in hummus is tahini, which I had bought a few months ago already. For some reason, I never got around to it until a few weeks ago.

                The ingredients are 1 can of chickpeas, ½ Tbsp parsley, 1 large clove of garlic, ¼ tsp ground cumin, 3 Tbsp lemon juice, 4 Tbsp water, 4 Tbsp tahini paste, 2 Tbsp olive oil. I blended these using an immersion blender until they were pretty smooth, but with a bit of texture remaining from the chickpeas.

                Besides for it being really yummy, it is definitely cheaper to make this at home. A can of chickpeas is 50 cents, and the container of tahini was about $4.00, and that will last a while. A small container of hummus from the store often costs around $4.00.

it's hummus!

Sunbutter banana cake (peanut-free, gluten-free)

                Back in the fall, I was visiting my cousin and his family for the weekend. He is a great bargain hunter, and he had found a 5 pound container of Sunbutter on Amazon for a few bucks. Thinking that he would use it to make sandwiches for his daughters’ lunches, he purchased 2 containers. Unfortunately his daughters did not like it...but fortunate was I! He offered me the closed container, and I took it hoping to use it in baking. And I did! I made oatmeal cookies, thumbprint cookies, and a banana cake. But I definitely had not used up the entire 5 pounds of Sunbutter.

Yesterday, the baking bug hit me again, and I remembered that I had 2 bananas in the freezer that were waiting to be used in baking. I even had extra time today, because my office closed early for the falling snow… It was baking day!

This recipe is great, not just because it is yummy. It happens to be gluten-free, which makes it work for those with celiac disease. It also happens to be peanut free, which is awesome for those with a peanut allergy. It is definitely not a health food. It is a yummy cake that those who can and can’t eat gluten can eat. It looks like a cake, tastes like a cake, acts like a cake, and has a nutrition profile of a cake.

I got the recipe from the Sunbutter website. It was intended to be a muffin recipe, but I put it in a loaf pan lined with parchment paper and baked it for about 50 minutes. For the ingredients and instructions, click here.

Sunbutter cake!

Wait, what is Sunbutter? It is a sandwich spread made from sunflower seeds. It looks fairly similar to peanut butter and spreads like peanut butter does. It is great for kids with peanut allergies and kids who go to peanut-free schools. 

Homemade Applesauce...Yum!

                I enjoy preparing my own food rather than buying things I can make myself. There are a few reasons for this. First, I actually enjoy preparing food. Second, I usually can make a healthier version of common packaged goods. And finally, I can often make the food for a lot cheaper than what it would cost to buy it in a store—though there is the increased cost associated with the time it takes me to make it. But again, usually I am enjoying myself in the kitchen.

                One food that I have been making a lot recently is homemade applesauce. Yes, it does take time to peel a bunch of apples. Yes, it does take time to chop them up. And yes, you have to occasionally mix it while it is simmering to make sure it does not burn. But it comes out so yummy and sweet, and it has no sugar!

                Here is how you do it. This will make a large-ish batch

1. Peel, core, and dice 8 medium or 4 humongous apples.
2. Put the diced apples into a large pot.
3. Add enough water to fill up to half the height of the apples.
4. You can add a cinnamon stick at this point. Then, you will get yummy cinnamon flavor and retain the light color. Or you can skip the cinnamon stick, and it will still taste delicious. 
5. Simmer on a low flame, stirring occasionally until the apples are soft enough that they mush when touched with a spoon and there is barely any water left.
6. Remove from heat and stir well until the apples become applesauce texture.

                One of my favorite ways to eat applesauce is on my oatmeal. It gives it plenty of sweetness without adding extra sugar.

 

you can barely see the oatmeal, but it is under the (homemade) yogurt and applesauce

                

Lots of Yogurt

                Because my small batch of yogurt was fairly successful, I was ready to try a larger run. I bought a gallon of 1% milk from my favorite National Wholesale Liquidators that sells milk for $3.00 usually. I had in the fridge Stop and Shop brand low fat yogurt that contained live and active bacterial cultures. And I was ready!

                This time, I heated my milk up in a crockpot. It took close to 4 hours for the milk to reach 185⁰F. Then, somewhat foolishly, I attempted to cool the milk by immersing it into a sink filled with cold water. Big mistake! Immediately, the crock developed a hairline crack. I quickly, (with the help of SP,) transferred the milk into 2 cooking dishes, and then let them cool on their own. Unfortunately, I let them cool to lower than 115⁰F, so I put them into the oven to warm them back to that temperature. In the meantime, I put about ½ cup of the yogurt to be used as the starter into a bowl. As soon as the milk was 115⁰F, I mixed about 1 cup milk into the yogurt, and then poured half the starter into each of the 2 cooking dished. I covered the dishes, then draped them with a blanket, and put 2 pots of boiling water on top to help maintain the warm temperature. I let the yogurt incubate for 8 hours. Then, I strained the yogurt for about 2 hours.

                I was intrigued that the yogurt from each of the dishes came out different than each other. The one in the shallow pan incubated at a lower temperature (likely due to the increased surface area it had to let heat escape.) That yogurt was a bit thinner, maybe a tad thinner than typical yogurt, but still definitely a yogurt consistency. The other one was much thicker, closer to Greek yogurt consistency. And both of the yogurts tasted like…yogurt! It was not too tart. It just tasted like plain yogurt. And none of the slightly grainy texture I had in my first one. It made about 4 quarts of yogurt, which means that it costed about $0.75 to make 1 quart of yogurt. I was pleased.  

Now, I have to find another method of heating my milk. I might get a large pot to be used for just this purpose. 

thicker yogurt before straining

thinner yogurt before straining

the yogurts straining!

thick yogurt after straining...it looks like yogurt, right?

My Yogurt Adventure

                I did it! I successfully prepared homemade yogurt. (See my post from last wee about my yogurt plan.) Props to my parents for allowing this adventure to happen in their home with their milk. They did not have yogurt to use as a starter, so shout out to YT and family for sharing with me a spoonful of Stonyfield Organic plain yogurt.

                This is what I did:

1. Find a thermometer. I had one, and then discovered that the battery was dead. Replaced the battery.
2. Pour 12oz Pride of the Farm lowfat milk into top of double boiler.
   
3. Heat milk to 180⁰F. Keep checking temperature with thermometer until it is just right.
4. Keep milk on lowest flame to maintain the milk at that temperature for about 5 minutes.
5. Remove from heat and let set milk pot in ice bath until temperature is 115⁰F. Keep checking temperature with thermometer until it is just right.
   
6. Add a bit of the milk to the spoonful of yogurt that is in a bowl at room temperature.
   
   
7. Transfer warm milk to insulated hot cup.
   
8. Pour the milk-yogurt starter mixture in.
9. Seal cup and put it in hot water bath. The water was about 125⁰F.
   
10. Wrap in towels to keep it insulated. 
    
11. Over the next 3 hours, I checked the temperature of the water bath twice and added more hot water to bring the temperature back up to 125⁰F. After that, I just let it sit undisturbed overnight.
12. After a total of 16 hours, I opened up the incubated milk.
    
13. I secured a thin rag over the top of a container and strained the yogurt through it for about 1 hour. I was left with some whey in the container. 
    

                I would definitely call this a success! The flavor was not too tart as I feared it would be after reading so much ahead of time. It did not taste like any yogurt I had eaten before, but it definitely tasted like yogurt! There was a slightly grainy texture to it, which from my reading may have to do with heating the milk too rapidly or moving the yogurt too much while it incubates. I will try to heat it slower next time and then leave it to peacefully incubate.

                 Anyone else want to try this? 

My Yogurt Plan

I have been reading up on yogurt. That is, making yogurt at home. I enjoy yogurt as part of my breakfast every day, and I was wondering if there was a cheaper way to have yogurt. I saw an advertisement for a yogurt maker, and a whole new world that I never knew existed was opened to me! My first though was to purchase a yogurt maker. Many different companies make them, and they are at a few different price points. Then, as my research progressed, I discovered that yogurt makers do not actually make your yogurt for you. Most of them are merely a warming device. They maintain the yogurt at a constant temperature to promote the growth of the bacteria that have been added to the previously heated milk. My further reading led me to discover that there are other methods of incubating yogurt that do not involve a special device. And besides, where would I store it??

Disclaimer: I have not made yogurt yet. It is on my agenda though. Perhaps it will work. Perhaps it will require some tweaking before I get it right. This is my plan: I will use my second, not yet used, crockpot to incubate my yogurt. I might have to try it a few times until I can get the temperature settings correct. But I am getting ahead of myself. Do you want to know how it is done? Well, I will tell you.

1. Heat 2 quarts milk to 180⁰ F and maintain milk at this temperature for about 5 minutes (I plan to use a thermometer)
2. Cool milk to 110-115⁰ F (again, I’ll need the thermometer)
3. Pour about 1 cup of milk into a bowl that has a few tablespoons of yogurt that contain live active cultures, and gently mix
4. Pour yogurt-milk mixture back into milk
5. Incubate milk at 110-115 ⁰ F for 8-24 hours (I think this might be the hardest part) Once this time is up, the milk should have thickened into yogurt
6. Now put in in the fridge to cool
7. Eat!! (the best part hopefully)

From my extensive reading, there are some issues that can come up. Sometimes, the milk does not thicken into yogurt. This can happen if the yogurt with the bacteria is added before the milk cools to 110-115⁰ F, because the bacteria will be killed from heat at higher temperatures. It can also remain liquidy if the yogurt cools below temperature while incubating, because the bacteria need that warm temperature to multiply. It also seems that homemade yogurt is typically thinner than the store bought varieties, as sometimes companies add thickeners. This can be remedied by straining the yogurt through a cheese cloth or stirring in powdered milk to the milk while heating.

So this is my proposal to myself: Brendel, make some yogurt! It might take some experimenting until I get good yogurt. I will keep you updated. Also, I still owe you my margarine-less sugar cookie recipe…I haven’t forgotten!

If any of you have made yogurt before, please let me know your experiences and any tips you have.