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As much as we love ice cream, we wouldn’t want you to miss out on another sweet, creamy treat: homemade frozen yogurt. So I went about looking for the very best method for making frozen yogurt. After testing several recipes I’ve found that whipping up your own batch of fro-yo isn’t too different from making your own ice cream, though there are a few key differences to keep in mind.
For this recipe, I went with what seemed to me to be the simplest method: straight yogurt, churned in an ice cream maker, frozen until snack time.
Why Making Frozen Yogurt Is Different From Making Ice Cream
If you want to make frozen yogurt, presumably you’re expecting to use yogurt for a good portion of your recipe. (It is the “yo” in fro-yo, after all.)
The problem is that yogurt, while creamy when you spoon it from the carton, actually contains a good amount of water and not a lot of fat.
When you freeze it, the water forms crystals that make fro-yo icy and decidedly non-creamy. The water also makes it challenging to freeze yogurt into something that’s actually scoopable and not just a solid ice cube.
While there are a few ways you can solve this dilemma (like hanging the yogurt in a cheesecloth overnight), in the end I decided to just embrace plain yogurt and turn to a few cooking tricks to ensure a spoonable, reasonably creamy, and totally satisfying dessert.
Tips for Making the Creamiest Frozen Yogurt
Start with whole-milk yogurt.
You can use either store-bought or homemade yogurt. If buying yogurt from the store, check the nutritional info and get yogurt with the highest fat content you can find. Why? Because fat is crucial to a non-icy frozen yogurt.
If you want a dairy-free frozen yogurt option I would check out this recipe for dairy-free raspberry and coconut frozen yogurt.
Add cream, mascarpone, or labneh.
When I asked Cheryl Sternman Rule, author of Yogurt Culture, about the dilemma of icy fro-yo, she recommended helping the yogurt out by adding another rich and creamy ingredient.
“Whole-milk yogurt ‘mounted’ with cream, labneh, or mascarpone results in richer, creamier, and more luxurious frozen yogurt than those that use just yogurt alone,” she said. “Textures are smoother and there’s less iciness.”
Sugar is crucial to making a creamier frozen yogurt because it inhibits the formation of ice crystals, which keeps the frozen yogurt creamy. Plus, freezing dulls sweet flavors, so even if you’re happy with the flavor of your yogurt straight from the carton, chances are you’ll want some sweetener once it’s frozen.
Whisk, churn, and freeze.
Because all the ingredients are already cold from the fridge — just whisk everything together until the sugar dissolves — there’s no need to chill this fro-yo base before churning it like you do with traditional ice cream. Pour it into your ice cream maker and have at it.
The Best Container for Freezing Frozen Yogurt
Another scooping trick is letting the frozen yogurt warm for a good 20 to 30 minutes on the counter before serving. This makes it much easier to scoop and much less icy on your tongue.