When it comes to desserts, ice-creams are my absolute favorite! I just love digging into the cup with a spoon, the cool spoon then touching my lips and every bite melting in my mouth, diffusing thousands of flavors at a time. Then as I swallow I could actually feel the ice-cream moving through my food pipe, I swear. But as the last spoon reaches my stomach, guilt follows. The guilt of gobbling on so much of cream and sugar, that’s the worst feeling in the world. It just takes away all the fun I had enjoying the ice-cream. Enter frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt is a lot healthier compared to ice-cream, why? Because for starters, it is made of yogurt, not milk and cream and we know that yogurt is very beneficial for good health as it is probiotic. Secondly, it does not contain heavy cream which is full of fats (and guilt!) So just in case, you are wondering that can you make frozen yogurt at home, let me tell you, yes you can! Read on to find out more.

Ingredients

2 Cups curd

2 tablespoon honey

1/2 cup strawberries

1/4th cup freshly cut fruits

2-3 tablespoons mixed nuts

2-3 tablespoon mixed berries

Recipe

If you are using regular curd, remember that when you make yogurt (or Greek yogurt or hung curd) out of it, it reduces in quantity. I will be telling you the recipe using regular curd, you can buy yogurt (also called chakka in Hindi) if you want.

Take a muslin or cotton cloth, fold it multiple times to increase its thickness. Pour the 2 cups of curd in it and tie a tight knot at the top. Place this curd in a sieve and then place this sieve in a large utensil. This way, the water draining out of the curd won’t flow in your kitchen to make a mess.
Leave it for a few hours, till most of the water has drained out of it.

Now roughly chop the strawberries. Blend and sieve half of the strawberries turning them into a fine puree.

Add this strawberry puree into the yogurt and mix thoroughly.

Add 2 tablespoons of honey (you can add or reduce the quantity as per your taste) Again mix thoroughly.

Chop the nuts and mixed berries and mix them with the flavored yogurt. Mix it well.

Pour this mixture in the ice-cream container or any airtight container and freeze it for a few hours.

When is has set, scoop it out into bowls and garnish with freshly cut fruits, nuts, and mixed berries.

Health Benefits/Nutritional Value

Curd/yogurt: Curd or yogurt is probiotic in nature, which means that it contains good bacteria that aids digestion and boosts our metabolism. To know more about probiotic, click here.

Honey: Healthy alternative to regular white sugar (contains 38.2% of fructose, 31.3% of glucose) To know more benefits of organic honey, click here.

Strawberries: Very energetic with too little calories, rich in potassium. It is an abundant source of water hence helps to keep the body hydrated.

Mixed fruits: Being rich in sucrose, you need lesser artificial sweetener. Besides sucrose is a good source of sugar.

Mixed nuts: Protein rich, with a large amount of vitamins and minerals. Zero cholesterol, low fat. To know more about mixed nuts, click here.

Mixed berries: Rich in dietary fibre and protein, abundant vitamins and minerals, low fat, cholesterol free and great and tasty source of antioxidants. Natural substitute to sugar. To know more, click here.

Notes

Remember, lesser the water in your yogurt, lower would be the chances of ice crystals forming in the freezer.

If you can, try to blend the flavored yogurt using any mixture you have. Adding air, fluffs up the frozen yogurt, thus reducing ice crystals.

You can substitute the fresh strawberry puree with any other fresh fruit or conserve.

You can add brown or regular sugar instead of honey, but this would make it a little unhealthy.

The best part of this recipe is that apart from being guilt free it is also healthy as it contains a lot of probiotic, and fresh fruits and nuts.