Did you know that you can make cheese from yoghurt? When you think about it it’s actually quite obvious, but until my recent trip to Yeo Valley I have to admit that I hadn’t realised you could.
It’s incredibly simple to do. Just line a seive with a clean tea towel or other cloth, spoon in the yoghurt (mixed with a pinch of salt) and leave it over a bowl in the fridge for 24 hours.
Twenty-four hours later you end up with cheese in your cloth (otherwise known as the curds) and a bowl full of whey. In our case we just discarded the whey, but a lovely little tip from Yeo Valley’s chef Jamie is to use it instead of water the next time you make bread to add a great flavour – something I’ll be trying to remember the next time I make cheese this way.
Once turned out from the tea towel I was left with a lovely bowl of soft cheese. When mixed with double cream, icing sugar and vanilla essence this forms the topping for your cheesecake.
The base is assempled in the usual cheesecake way of mixing crushed digestive biscuits with some melted butter to hold them together. You need to press all these down in the base of your cake tin or pie dish and a flat bottomed glass is an ideal way of doing that.
You’re now ready to add the topping and then you’re nearly done. You’ll need to put the cheesecake back in the fridge for a bit to “set”. The recipe suggests 30 minutes, but I think a bit longer may be better if you want it to hold together more. If you’re not fussed about fancy presentation though then 30 minutes is plenty long enough to have to wait!
Served with a good dollop of Yeo Valley summer fruits compote (nope – I didn’t know they made that either until I visited there) this was absolutely delicious and a doddle to make. There’s also a great feeling of satisfaction in knowing that you made the cheese yourself.
If you take a look at the recipe on the Yeo Valley website, another serving suggestion is to put it in small jam jars for individual portions that would be idea for a picnic, or even for a jubilee street party. The only difference you need to make is to omit the butter from the base as you don’t need it to hold together in the same way seeing as it is contained in the jar.
Another twist on the orignal recipe is to use a flavoured yoghurt, just as fellow Yeo visitor Knitty Mummy has done. With some of the great flavours that Yeo Valley make I’m sure that’ll make quite something quite different.
Make sure you have a look at the recipes section of the Yeo Valley website for some more yoghurt based cookery inspiration.
Disclaimer: I was recently invited to spend a day at Yeo Valley along with othr parent bloggers. As part of that day we had a great cookery demonstration from their head chef Jamie, which included this recipe.
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