How to Make Frozen Yogurt

As much as we love ice cream, we wouldn’t want you to miss out on another sweet, creamy treat: homemade frozen yogurt. So I went about looking for the very best method for making frozen yogurt. After testing several recipes I’ve found that whipping up your own batch of fro-yo isn’t too different from making your own ice cream, though there are a few key differences to keep in mind.

For this recipe, I went with what seemed to me to be the simplest method: straight yogurt, churned in an ice cream maker, frozen until snack time.

If you want to make frozen yogurt, presumably you’re expecting to use yogurt for a good portion of your recipe. (It is the “yo” in fro-yo, after all.)

The problem is that yogurt, while creamy when you spoon it from the carton, actually contains a good amount of water and not a lot of fat.

When you freeze it, the water forms crystals that make fro-yo icy and decidedly non-creamy. The water also makes it challenging to freeze yogurt into something that’s actually scoopable and not just a solid ice cube.

While there are a few ways you can solve this dilemma (like hanging the yogurt in a cheesecloth overnight), in the end I decided to just embrace plain yogurt and turn to a few cooking tricks to ensure a spoonable, reasonably creamy, and totally satisfying dessert.

You can use either store-bought or homemade yogurt. If buying yogurt from the store, check the nutritional info and get yogurt with the highest fat content you can find. Why? Because fat is crucial to a non-icy frozen yogurt.

If you want a dairy-free frozen yogurt option I would check out this recipe for dairy-free raspberry and coconut frozen yogurt.

When I asked Cheryl Sternman Rule, author of Yogurt Culture, about the dilemma of icy fro-yo, she recommended helping the yogurt out by adding another rich and creamy ingredient.

“Whole-milk yogurt ‘mounted’ with cream, labneh, or mascarpone results in richer, creamier, and more luxurious frozen yogurt than those that use just yogurt alone,” she said. “Textures are smoother and there’s less iciness.”

Sugar is crucial to making a creamier frozen yogurt because it inhibits the formation of ice crystals, which keeps the frozen yogurt creamy. Plus, freezing dulls sweet flavors, so even if you’re happy with the flavor of your yogurt straight from the carton, chances are you’ll want some sweetener once it’s frozen.

• Use at least 3/4 cup sugar per quart of yogurt for freezing purposes, plus more to taste.
• I stick with plain sugar, but you can experiment with other sweeteners, like honey, maple syrup, or agave.
• One more tip from Cheryl: A little bit of corn syrup can also help prevent ice crystals from forming.

Because all the ingredients are already cold from the fridge — just whisk everything together until the sugar dissolves — there’s no need to chill this fro-yo base before churning it like you do with traditional ice cream. Pour it into your ice cream maker and have at it.

• For soft-serve-style fro-yo: Churn until the yogurt reaches the consistency of soft-serve ice cream and serve it right away.
• For scoopable fro-yo: Once it’s finished churning, pack it into a freezer container, or cake pan; cover it with parchment paper; and freeze it until hardened.

I recommend freezing your frozen yogurt in a container that is fairly shallow and wide, like an 8×8-inch baking pan or a 9-inch cake pan.

Another scooping trick is letting the frozen yogurt warm for a good 20 to 30 minutes on the counter before serving. This makes it much easier to scoop and much less icy on your tongue.