Total Greek Yoghurt

I was luck enough to be invited to a Total Greek Yoghurt ‘I Love My Lunchbox’ event recently and got some generous samples to take home and try.  Following on from that event Total Greek Yoghurt sent me a selection of their duo pots (plain yoghurt in the main part and a fruit compote or honey in the small attached part of the pot) to review.

Years ago I thought plain yoghurt was just for eating if you were on a weight loss diet and was about as exciting!  More recently I discovered Greek style yoghurt (I have not been to Greece yet but hope to one day) and the taste and creaminess was nothing like the yoghurt of my youth.

These days it is unusual for me not to have Greek style yoghurt in the fridge and it seems appropriate that a good tablespoon or two gets into a large proportion of the food I prepare.

When the samples arrived from Total Greek Yoghurt (TGY) the first thing I did was try each flavour.  They sent me Honey, Blueberry, Strawberry and Tropical Fruits.  My favourite is definitely the plain yoghurt with honey.  The quality of the honey is extremely good and mixes with the plain yoghurt to produce a creamy, rich, luscious dessert. 

Recently when I made a cake with this flavour it brought to mind middle eastern images so I added pistachio nuts and chopped dates.  The recipe for this cake is:

Ingredients:

100g Self Raising flour

100g Castor sugar

100g Unsalted butter

2 large eggs

1 pot TGY Greek yogurt with honey duo pot

100g chopped dates

50g chopped pistachio nuts

3 Tbsp Demerara sugar for topping

Method:

• Grease and line a 20cm square baking pan.
• Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy (I used the new Russell Hobs hand mixer that I received to review – this will be a further post to watch out for)
• Add the eggs and a little bit of the flour to stop the eggs curdling.
• Add the contents of the duo pot of yoghurt, the chopped nuts and the chopped dates (it is a good trick to coat the dates in a little of the flour to stop them sticking together and to stop them falling to the bottom of the cake)
• Mix well together and pour into prepared baking pan.
• Sprinkle a little golden Demerara sugar over the top of the cake which will add a crunch to the finished cake.
• Bake for approximately 35-45 minutes till the top is golden brown and a skewer stuck in the middle comes out clean.
• Cool completely, cut into squares and serve sprinkled with icing sugar on top and a little frozen Total Greek Yogurt on the side.

This cake did not last long in our house!

The next TGY duo pot I tried was the Blueberry.  I was visiting my daughter and decided to bake blueberry muffins with my two year old grandson Logan helping me!  I weighed out the ingredients but let Logan put them into the bowl and help with the mixing.  I did however have to explain that we do not put the whole egg, shell and all into the mix, and that we need to open the egg first!  He got that OK and cracked the second egg on the counter top!

We followed the recipe I got from the ‘I Love My Lunchbox’ event which was demonstrated by Nick Coffer aka ‘My Daddy Cooks’.  This is a simple recipe and a very good one to make with the children or grandchildren as the exact quantities are not so important.  The Greek yoghurt gives the muffins a light effect and you can add fresh or frozen blueberries if you like as well.

Whilst I liked the Strawberry flavour duo pot my least favourite was the Tropical Fruits.  I could not really identify which fruits were used when I tasted it but perhaps it would come into its own if you were to bake with it and add some tropical extras to the mix.

There are so many ways you can use Greek style yoghurt and here are just a couple of my favourites:-

• mix in the fruit/honey pot, stir then pour over breakfast cereal or fresh fruit.  The strawberry duo pot is excellent poured over fresh, sliced strawberries and raspberries.  The tropical fruit or honey duo pots work well mixed together and poured over kiwi fruit and passion fruit mixed or sliced bananas.
• I made potato salad and for the dressing to pour over the cold potatoes I mixed 3 Tbsp mayonnaise, 3 Tbsp plain Total Greek Yoghurt, My Secret Kitchen (Heidi’s Secret Kitchen Facebook page or www.mysecretkitchen.co.uk ) Lemon Chipolte Sea Salt, 2 garlic cloves crushed (www.pamperedchef.biz/partieswithHeidi), 2 tsp creamed horseradish or wasabe and 2-3 Tbsp My Secret Kitchen Thai Dressing with Kaffir Limes.  I mixed this through the potatoes and added chopped chives.  Lovely!

Keep checking back to this blog to see what I do with the plain yoghurt from Total Greek Yoghurt.

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