HOMEMADE FRUIT ON THE BOTTOM YOGURTS

I’m constantly looking for ways to streamline healthy eating in our house. One thing I’ve learned about myself in my quest to keep up a healthy diet—if it ain’t easy, I’m probably not going to follow through. That’s why I’m such a big fan of single serving yogurts. They are inherently portion controlled, super easy, tasty and full of healthy fats, protein and probiotics.

Unfortunately, there are also quite a few things that I don’t love about single serving yogurts. I really hate all the waste they create. We try to reuse our leftover yogurt containers wherever possible (and recycle if we can’t reuse), but that’s still generating way more waste than I feel comfortable with.  I also don’t love the price. If you hit a good sale, you can maybe get organic yogurt for $1 per single-serving container (which averages around 6 ounces). By making my own yogurt from organic milk, I can get a full gallon of yogurt for about $5. A gallon at single serving prices=$21. That’s a hefty savings when you eat as much yogurt as we do.

I’m not sure why this never occurred to me before, but last week, as I was ogling over the giant cartons of flavored Chobani at Costco, I had a thought—why not make my own single serving yogurts? That way, I can make sure I use reusable containers and get the cost-savings of making yogurt in bulk, while still enjoying the convenience of single-serving yogurts. Bonus: I get to control the sugar-content and flavors of whats in each batch of yogurt.

I think you probably could have seen the lightbulb over my head from all the way across the store.

So after spending a small fortune at Costco (and not getting the beautiful cases of Chobani), my next stop was our local megamart to the Mason jar aisle, where I found these adorable little four ounce quilted jelly jars. For a set of 12, these set me back about $9. They are a touch smaller than your usual single-serving yogurts, but you could just as easily pick up the eight ounce jelly jars and do the same thing. I just couldn’t resist the cute little jars. And at $0.75 each, I pretty much make my money back on the first batch of yogurts! Woohoo!

For the fruit-on-the-bottom part, I came up with a lightly-sweet blueberry-chia syrup concoction that not only looks great in the jars, but adds tons of flavor, antioxidants and omega-3s. You’ll find the recipe below, and feel free to adjust it and tweak it to make it your own. I like to keep the sugar content on the low side, so if you’re into sweeter yogurts, I’d up the sugar content. And you can use whatever fruits and flavors make your heart sing.

On top, I just put my standard, plain homemade yogurt. If you aren’t into making your own yogurt (although, side note, you should be—it’s so easy and cheap!), you can just as easily buy the large tubs of yogurt and follow the same process. You’ll still be saving money over buying the single-serving versions.