Fat Free, Frozen, Carbonated, Greek Yogurt [experimentation]

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This was an experiment in making home-made fat free frozen yogurt. I attempted to do it with dry ice. I'll break up the process:

The Idea

The general idea of making frozen anything is to freeze it without the formation of large ice crystals. A traditional ice cream maker does this by churning as it freezes. Another option is to freeze it really quickly. Liquid nitrogen ice cream is a popular example. By adding the liquid N2you very quickly freeze it. While not as cold as liquid N2, dry ice (solid CO2) is pretty darn cold and has been used. It also makes the icecream "carbonated" with a bit of a tingle.

The Setup

Dry ice sublimates (goes from solid --> gas at room temp) and is heavier than "regular" air. It can cause a CO2 blanket to form. As such, I set up a fan to push it out in case the pooch hung out in the kitchen

Getting the dry ice ready

You need to crush the dry ice. My original plan was to put it in a strong bag and use the roller. However, the bag broke on the first hit. I then put a flexible cutting board down, laid clean towels on it, and used that. I sifted it to make sure it was as powdered as possible. (eating a chunk of dry ice is rather dangerous)

I started with the whisk to try to add as much air into the mixture as possible. I also added the splenda at this point.

I then switched to the scraping beater blade (not the one pictured above), put it on a medium speed, and added the dry ice.

Here is where I ran into trouble. I do not know if it was (a) the mixer set too slow, (b) the adding too much dry ice, or (c) a combination, but a thick, very solid layer formed at the bottom of the bowl. It made the mixer have to work very, very hard to move what wasn't frozen around. It also meant that I essentially wasted a good amount of the yogurt.

The final product was about 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 lbs of "frozen yogurt". I put half into a container in the freezer and I ate the other half.

It was sadly not amazing. First of all, I do not know if it was the yogurt, the cold, or what but I barely tasted the splenda. Basically, it was colder and thicker greek yogurt. You could feel the tingle of the carbonation so that was pretty cool.'

What went into the freezer froze solid and is not edible. I will put it in the fridge and see if it becomes regular yogurt again.

Overall, it was not worth it. I wasted about 1.5 lbs of yogurt and, for what I got, it was no cheaper than fro-yo shops. But I will use this as a jumping off point

Future Ideas

I have a few ideas to improvethis method. Not sure if they will fix it or not but we'll see.

KitchenKatalog

The Idea

The Setup

Getting the dry ice ready

Future Ideas