Kids need Calcium (Lakeland Bulk Yogurt Maker)

Member Name: MaryanneH

Product:	Lakeland Bulk Yogurt Maker
Date:	18/03/06 (747 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: lovely smooth yoghurt

Disadvantages: no peeping

Every mother knows the importance of ensuring their children get plenty of calcium, usually in the form of milk. So when you have one that pretty much point blank refuses to drink it, eventually to maintain sanity, anyone would give up and let them eat yoghurts instead.

Now from a financial point of view this can get expensive so I finally decided to buy a yoghurt maker and chose one from Lakeland www.lakelandlimited.co.uk. This cost me £19.95 and as I like Lakeland items I spent over £45 so the postage was free. Under this amount it would have been £3.35.

Having read some reviews I knew that I would need some natural yoghurt and milk to make it with, or as my husband rather cynically said 'so you need yoghurt to make yoghurt'

When it arrived, as any kid with a new toy I was straight into the kitchen to start it off.

What does it look like?

It is a very small unit, with a base unit which is just cylindrical with a plug, an inside plastic container which looks at first glance like a measuring jug, an inner lid that fixes onto the plastic container and has a very weird looking spoon attached, which is useful but I'm surprised they bothered, and finally an outer lid. The box also contained a very small piece of paper with the instructions on.

Storage isn't a huge problem as it fits nicely in a cupboard, but if you are reliant on a small under work top fridge I don't think it would fit in very easily without transferring the yoghurt to another container. This isn't a problem for me as it fits fine into a big fridge.

The instructions

Now I am very sorry to say I found these woefully inadequate.

The first problem was, it was more obscure than my O level English comprehension test, I spent 20 minutes trying to work out whether I was supposed to remover the inner container, or whether that was where the yoghurt was made. Eventually I spotted a small difference in wording that seemed to indicate that you left it in.

The second problem, not many people make yoghurt, on the contrary growing any form of culture in your kitchen is known to be bad, all our kitchen cleaners have bleaches in them to kill anything that might grow. Therefore, although I do have an O level Biology, so know the theory, putting it into practise is somewhat daunting, and not being a scientific advisor from Muller, I could have done with more information on yoghurts. I got precisely none. For example, all the instruction says is how to mix the initial mixture, and that you leave it running for 8 hours. I would like to know what would happen if I left it for longer, would I end up with a lucky mistake, like Flemming discovering penicillin, maybe the cure for cancer, or on the other side of the coin, a blob like monster could develop, engulfing the world. Or more likely I just make my family ill for a couple of days, I don't know and the instructions certainly do not tell me.

The third weakness with the instructions is the lack of recipes, usually when you buy any form of food product there are some recipes with it. You guessed it, nothing, there was a small paragraph suggestion you might add milkshake mix or pureed fruit to it, but that was it.

The process

Now, one area that the instructions were quite specific on was the type of milk you use, any pasteurized milk may still contain some organisms in them, which whilst they are fine to drink as milk it is not a good idea to try and breed them further which is precisely what would happen if it were placed in a yoghurt maker. So the first thing I had to do was boil the milk, to kill anything off, and let it cool. I think this is where I made mistake number 1 as the milk was still probably too hot when I started it off, ever eager to get going.

Its incredible simple to mix, all you do is put 2 tsps of yoghurt into the container and mix it with a pint and a half of milk, switch it on and go about your daily business. It does however specify that the mixture should be completely undisturbed for the 8 hours. With the best will in the world, with 2 excited children this was never going to happen the first time around, despite the fact that the instructions said 'no peeping', we just had to have a couple of little peeps, which of course also moved the container - mistake number 2.

The result

Actually, once the 8 hours were up, I was quite pleased with the result, I had a litre and a half (another contradiction of the ingredients, ingredients in, in imperial, product out, in metric) of fresh yoghurt. This was initially very solid with some residue on top, which, as the instructions didn't tell me, I was unsure whether to mix in or drain off. I chose to mix in, I'm still not sure if this was the right decision.

The night before I had mixed up a blackberry mix, with a blackberry syrup and some mushed up blackberries, the last of last autumns harvest in our freezer. I deliberately kept some of the liquid separated as the more liquid you add, the thinner the yoghurt becomes.

Tasting

When we were finally ready for the first taste my husband had a definite 'Oh no, she actually expects me to try it' look on his face. One of the big problems today is, we are very used to everything commercial containing additives and sweetening. Even the natural yoghurt from the shops, so I will admit that is was a bit of a shock on first taste, completely fresh, but crying out, to my uneducated pallet, for sugar. So we mixed in the blackberries, some vanilla essence and the syrup, which did make it more like a yoghurt smoothie but the girls loved it. The texture was not as smooth as commercial products as it seemed to have separated a bit, which was either due to the overly hot milk, or the peeping. It was incredibly fresh and actually rather nice, although I don't think I compete with commercial yoghurt yet.

So for attempt number 2, I will try using UHT milk and buy a can of fruit to use which should solve the sweetness issue as it will have more flavour, and will still work out much cheaper than buying yoghurt every week. So I will continue this review after that….

So, a mere 48 hours after the first one (this could get time consuming) I embarked on yoghurt number 2, this time I used UHT full fat milk and didn't peep.

The result was a huge improvement, completely smooth yoghurt. This time we mushed it up with a tin of peaches, so ended up with 2 litres of yoghurt smoothie. To get proper yoghurt I should have drained the syrup off, but at least now I know how to control it.

So for just over £1 I got 2 litres of yoghurt smoothie, which should last a couple of days at least. For an economy item I'm not convinced yet as we seem to end up eating twice as much.

And of course the most important thing - my daughter is not objecting to having calcium.

Thank you for reading.

Summary: great yoghurt