Just over a month ago I decided to start making yoghurt. Everyone does something, bread, pasta etc, but I eat a lot of yoghurt and decided that I could, with practice, come to a standard as good as the top-of-the-range ones while having complete control of what goes into them.

I started out by following the guide at wikiHow. It was a pretty successful batch, although a little flavourless. Since then I have adapted and changed the recipe, learning from each previous batch. I have used different starters, milks, creams and sugars and have settled on the following recipe.  I am pretty pleased with the current results, so I thought I’d share them here. I use:

• 1.5 litres of whole milk
• A pot of any good jam (strawberry works well, gooseberry was good but black cherry was not really sweet enough)
• I used one and a half pots of Activia as a starter, but now I use one of my previous week’s yoghurts

I start by setting the oven on a non-fan setting on a low heat at around 50?C. Then, I pretty much go as the guide on wikiHow states, I bring the milk to around 85?C. I don’t use a thermometer but instead go by the point at which the milk starts to froth, heating it very gently and stirring it often.

Once it starts to froth I turn off the heat and put the pan into a sink of cold water. Stirring the milk to help cool it down until pressing my wrist against it feels neutral, which is a little lower than body temperature (I guess around 35?, it works so I assume I’m right!).

For me, the oven at 50? keeps it actually just around 40?, as the fan doesn’t bring the heat near the top into the main part of the oven. I put a tray of 12 large pots into the oven to warm.

Once the milk is at wrist-temperature I stir the pot of yoghurt before stirring it into the milk. Then I spoon one tablespoon of jam into each pot (having taken them from the oven) before topping them up with milk.

I cling-film each one to seal it and then put them back on the tray in the oven for around eight hours. Generally, I do all this while having lunch so that a) it’s not boring and b) I have eight hours ahead of me in which to incubate them. Once the yoghurts are finished I put them directly into the fridge overnight.

Doing this I generally find that the yoghurt takes another day in the fridge before it gets its normal tang, but they are perfectly creamy and edible the morning directly after incubating. The only drawback I have found is that cling-filming each pot is difficult and dull, but it’s also cheap so I put up with it.