All Entries Tagged With: "Yogurt"
Qoola on Denman, Vancouver
A week ago, Suanne and I received an invitation to checkout a new frozen yogurt place called Qoola. Since we were going to be in downtown anyway for the Taste BC event on the same night, we decided to pop over. I know it is kind of weird … we were going for yogurt, waffle and crepes immediately after wine and cheese, sushi, burger … all on the same night.
So, Suanne, Angie and I took a short drive to the western end of Denman to where Qoola is. Qoola is actually located at the old location of Cupcakes (1116 Denman).
We were met up front by Warrick who is the man behind the entire idea of Qoola. Warrick came across to us as a bright, energetic young man with great passion in what he does.
Qoola had been opened for just one month so everything is spanking clean. We love the bright greenish interior. Qoola is green … more greener than what we expected and we soon realized how seriously green they are.
We had a crash course, to say the least … much of which went swosh over my head. Too much data and too technical for me after all the wine from Taste BC.
Not really a person who knows what is what, we left the choice to Warrick and his partners. The only thing we asked is that they surprise us. First came their Green Tea Yogurt with blueberry and marionberry sauce. It was good and we like it.
I don’t care much for frozen yogurt. The only time I had frozen yogurt of note is Red Mango which we had in Bellevue,WA. I was told that many frozen yogurt places uses powdered yogurt which contains only about 1 million bacteria. However, Qoola uses only fresh yogurt despite its limited shelf life of a couple of weeks only. Fresh yogurt has 400 times more bacteria than powdered yogurt.
The next surprise is the Original yogurt with apples, cinnamon flakes and caramel sauce. We love this more than the earlier one. I like especially the fresh looking and crunchy apple chunks. More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Making Yogurt
The Dairy Making 101 workshop also covered making yogurt. Yogurt is produced by fermenting milk with bacteria. The bacteria lives on the sugar in milk i.e. lactose and produces lactic acid. The lactic acid acts on the milk protein to form yogurt and makes the yogurt slightly tang.
Yogurt is very nutritious and is rich in protein, calcium, riboflavin, vitamin B6 and B12. Yogurt is good for people with poor bowel movement i.e. not regular.
We started with heating the milk to between 110F and 180F. Some people preferred to heat to the higher limit for food safety reason. You may flavour the milk with vanilla bean or extract or even cumin as Thomas did.
Let the milk cool to 110F.
Thomas prepared some 1 litre bottles by filing them with hot water and fill a cooler with the bottles and covered them with towels. This helps to keep the cooler warm.
Thomas then empty the preheated bottle and fill it the warm milk.
Into the milk, he added a tablespoon of plain yogurt (preferably organic and made of just milk and culture) to start the fermentation process. The bottles have to be kept in a warm place for 8 to 12 hours. The ice box which Thomas has preheated is a good way to store them. You may want to replace some bottles of hot water to keep it warm for the period of fermentation. Another good way is to keep them in a gas stove with pilot light. Someone in the group suggested to use an electric blanket, great idea.
You may sweetened the home made yogurt with honey when you want to eat them.
