Spend to save - get a yogurt maker and make yummy, cheap yogurt! (Lakeland Bulk Yogurt Maker)

Member Name: SparklePink

Product:	Lakeland Bulk Yogurt Maker
Date:	03/01/09 (286 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap to run. Makes great yogurt.

Disadvantages: Instruction booklet is a bit brief - some extra flavouring ideas might be nice.

I bought one of these to see if I could reduce my food bills by making yogurt at home and boy, is it working! I debated between this one and an Easiyo, but decided on this as I don't need to buy sachets - I can just use milk and yogurt straight from the supermarket.

I find it really easy to use and can get everything mixed up in about 5 minutes. The yogurt maker itself consists of an plastic inner container with a lid and an outer container with a lid. You put a teaspoon of yogurt into the inner container, add 900ml milk and 2 tbsps evaporated milk powder and pop it in the outer container and wait for 8 hours and voila - yogurt. You can then add flavourings or fruit to sweeten it up.

I have found that the yogurt is a bit watery when I take it out although I think this may be because I use skimmed milk. However, I have started straining the yogurt through a muslin square (handily available from Lakeland) for a couple of minutes and this ends up with a much better texture.

It does have a couple of "features" that are pretty pointless - the lid of the inner container is held in place by a piece of plastic that is meant to double as a spoon, although its too angular to be a useful spoon (it holds the lid on fine though). Also, on top of the outer container lid is a disk which you can rotate around to select the hour at which your yogurt will be ready. E.g. if it is 1pm now, it will be ready at 9pm, so you rotate the disk to show 9. I find this next to useless as it isn't an audible alert - you still have to remember to take your yogurt out. I ended up buying a timer for my plug which turns the yogurt maker on and off at the correct times and this works much better.

Overall I would definitely recommend this. It's quick to setup, makes yummy yogurt and costs a fraction of shop-bought stuff.

Summary: Fantastic - it makes cheap, yummy yogurt.