Homemade Fro Yo

I have a thing for Fro Yo. Right before I got laid off last year, an Italian Frozen Yogurt shop opened across the street from my office in Boulder. The boys I worked with and I frequented it - for Acai Berry Frozen Yogurt with Gummi Bears. I'm not sure what was sadder - losing my job or losing my fro yo.

At my kitchen shower last summer I received a Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker [aff]. Let the record show we did not register for an Ice Cream Maker - we kept our registry as practical as possible after B's mom told us her feelings about registries that include furniture and bread makers. So, in an effort to please, we did our very best to stick to dinnerware, table linens, towels and sheets - things we knew we'd use daily.



So anyway, a family friend who loves making ice cream with her family gave us the appliacnce. And with an August goal to make ice cream, we pulled out the machine for the first time.

But Ice Cream recipes include heavy cream and lots of sugar, and I fight an on-going battle with my thighs. So we turned to FroYo.

We found a delicious recipe here and modified it with what we had in the house. And it was phenomenal.

Here's our variation of David Lebovitz's recipe:

• 3 cups fat-free (or fat-full if you like, you're the boss) plain yogurt. No fancy greek style, no straining. Just plop it in there.

• 1/3 - 1/2 cup sugar. I've found that just a smidge over 1/3 is perfectly sweet without being overly so, but I don't know how sweet you like your fro yo.

• 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract.

You mix all of the ingredients together until the sugar is involved, then you just throw it all into the frozen ice cream barrel, let it mix for 20 minutes, and eat delicious fro yo. The first time we did this (pictured above), we didn't freeze the bowl long enough so we just ate slightly solid sweetened yogurt. The next time, after freezing the bowl for 24 hours, we had fro yo, baby.

And, I've heard you can do this without an ice cream maker if you don't have one, too. 

Enjoy!