Whip Up a Special Sweet: Easy Sweet Recipes at Home for Refreshing Frozen Yogurt

The humidity and unbearable heat does not seem to get better in June and with the erratic monsoons, it’s highly likely the month goes by with blazing suns and dehydrating days. This is why you should choose a refreshing and healthy dessert like frozen yogurt. It can be made at home, where you know exactly what goes into your frozen dessert.

A Brief History

We have hot weather and souring milk to thank for yogurt, an ancient food discovered around 5,000 to 10,000 years ago and used in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Yoghurt was a staple for almost every culture that kept animals for milk. Even in the ancient era in our own country, India, the combination of yogurt and honey was called "the food of the gods", and it still is, used in religious worship. Psst, the Persians believed Abraham's longevity resulted from regularly eating yogurt.

This beloved fermented food has played a major role in Mediterranean cuisine since 800 B.C. and refused to go out of fashion, even earning the admiration of Genghis Khan, who attributed his warriors' bravery to their regular yogurt consumption. But of course, Genghis Khan is from a land that loves their curdled milk products.

Fast forward to the pre-modern era and of the great period of industrialization, The founder of Kellogg's decided patients at his Michigan sanitarium should each get a pint of yogurt. However, it wasn't until the late 20th century that yogurt became more mainstream and in 1919, Isaac Carasso started the yogurt company Danone. A few decades later, an entrepreneur named H.P. Hood introduced frozen yogurt, known as “frogurt”. This was back in the 1970s, which was served as a soft-serve dessert that tasted a lot like ice cream and by the 1990s, frozen desserts already occupied 10 percent of the total frozen dessert market.

This dessert has made a big comeback with climate change making summers almost unbearable in many countries. Businesses have taken note of the health-conscious folks and the qualities of yogurt, and reintroduced or introduced this dessert in different pockets of the cities in India too. You will find a frozen yogurt shop in any metropolitan city that offers these refreshing ice-cream-like desserts and frozen yogurt's upward trend shows no sign of slowing down and is expected to reach at least $2.14 billion by 2028.

Berilicious Banana Frozen Yoghurt

Ingredients:

• 945 ml sliced frozen strawberries, or other frozen fruit of your choice (see notes)
• 475 ml sliced frozen banana
• 235 ml Greek yogurt
• 10 ml orange extract/ vanilla extract
• 60 ml to 80 ml honey
• 60 gm sugar (optional)
• 15 ml corn syrup (optional)

Instructions:

1. Put the frozen strawberries, banana, yogurt, orange or vanilla extract, honey (60 ml), sugar, and corn syrup in a mixer grinder. You will need a blender that has multiple blends that can take the heavy load of the ingredients, and effortlessly break them down.
2. Blend until everything is mushy and has the consistency of a smoothie. Scoop a bit to taste and add honey or sugar as per your sweetness requirement. If it's not sweet enough, pour more honey and give it a quick whizz.
3. Take a large freezer-safe container, you can do smaller ones too and divide the yogurt smoothie into different containers. Smooth the surface after scraping from the mixer.
4. Take a sheet of parchment paper (or more) and gently press it onto the surface of the container(s). This prevents the crystallization of the yogurt. Keep in the freezer overnight or about 6 hours.
5. The next morning, take the container or containers out and scoop into serving bowls.

Pro-tips:

Pick a full-fat yogurt for the best results, and in case you don’t get your hands on that kind, the corn syrup will help you thicken your dessert. Sugar, although optional, is highly recommended to be used, for the texture of the frozen yogurt. If you don’t mind the calories, try adding 50 ml or a tad more of whipping cream to the blender. The dessert will have a creamy finish that will be highly addictive. This recipe uses strawberries and bananas, you can experiment with other flavors like raspberry, mango and peaches, all frozen of course.