Making your own yoghurt is very straightforward and is much nicer than the bought variety.

Buy a good organic yogurt or kefir as a starter culture. Choose a glass jar size that makes enough for at least one to two servings for your family. Put about 1cm depth of yogurt in the jar. Warm your milk up to just a little more than luke-warm and pour onto your yogurt culture and stir it together. Put a lid on securely and place under a pillow and/or blanket to keep warm for 6-8 hours or overnight!

It will thicken up and the jar feels heavier when you take it out of its warm place, though it tastes better once it’s chilled in the fridge. 

Kefir is made the same way. An alternative to normal milk is coconut milk. Kefir has a thinner consistency than yoghurt either way whichever you choose. You can buy kafir grains as a starter culture from a good health food shop. Just dissolve them for 20 minutes in a small amount of warm milk and stir. Then add a bigger quantity of warm milk. 

Leave again some yogurt/ kefir in the jar to make another batch the next day or two…. Each batch lasts up to 4 days and can be repeated about 10-15 times from your original starter culture . It’s all easy really and becomes part of your bedtime routine to make the next lot and put it to bed …maybe not with you!!

ingredients :

• Oats, buckwheat or millet flour (raggi) if you can get it
• Eggs, olive oil 
• Grated apple and/or courgettes
• Orange rind / juice and /or almond milk or coconut milk
• Dates ,or/and other  dried fruit or blueberries ,
• Mashed bananas 
• Chopped Almonds or walnuts 

Mix and put in cupcake or muffin tin or / and bread loaf tin on 180/200 temperature for about half an hour !

Ingredients for a home made seed, nuts and dried fruit Muesli mixture

This home made museli mixture goes well with the apple purée with spices recipe as well as the home made yoghurt. The three combined set you up with all the nutritional requirements you need even on a vegetarian or vegan diet!

• Oats ,big and little flakes
• Optional : add some bought muesli mixture  and crunchy 
•  Seeds: linseed ,ground possibly in coffee grinder
• Pumpkin and sunflower seeds
• Chia seeds – but it makes mixture go a bit soggy.
• Nuts : hazelnuts ,almonds and Brazil nuts and walnuts (cut up if time into smaller pieces )
• Dried Fruit : dates ,apricots, prunes and mixed raisins and cranberries. 
• (Aldi and Lydls have all the above in good sized packets )

Put into airtight containers or reuse the bags you’ve just emptied. 

Can soak in water or milk/yogurt  over night in the bowl you will eat from.