Baked Yogurt Custard
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Icy cold smoothies made with plain non-fat yogurt have been a great way to get calcium through my diet this summer - but smoothies will not be appealing as the weather gets cooler. In the past week, I started looking for other ways to eat yogurt that are warming. My favorite so far is Baked Yogurt Custard.
Icy cold smoothies made with plain non-fat yogurt have been a great way to get calcium through my diet this summer - but smoothies will not be appealing as the weather gets cooler. In the past week, I started looking for other ways to eat yogurt that are warming. My favorite so far is Baked Yogurt Custard.
The basic idea is to use non-fat plain yogurt, fruit and eggs as the basis for custard rather than the more typical milk (usually with some fat), sugar, and eggs. The recipe below was my first experiment:
- 1 banana
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup grated sweet potatoes
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 teaspoon orange zest
- 1 cup yogurt
Slice banana into baking disk. Mash. Add other ingredients. Whisk thoroughly. Let mixture come to room temperature.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake custard until ‘set’ (it took about 30 minutes in my oven).
Let cool to comfortable eating temperature.
The resulting ‘custard’ is thick and has a pleasant tang from the yogurt and orange peel. Some discoveries with this initial recipe:
- The grated sweet potatoes were a little crunchy (I was trying to clean out ingredients from the refrigerator and should have saved the sweet potatoes for something else!) and
- It probably was too much to eat at one sitting (but it was so good!)
I’ll make some adjustments next time and try some other fruits similar to what I have been using in smoothies during the summer. Pumpkin custard using yogurt rather than evaporated milk sounds good too; it would require sugar of some kind (honey rather than white sugar?). It occurred to me that Baked Yogurt Custard could also be made with vegetables (different seasonings and no sugar) to be more quiche-like. It is a lower fat technique than using cheese or cream. And I will try cooking it in my crockpot rather than heating up the whole oven!
The bottom line of all this is that I’ll continue buying as much non-fat plain yogurt through the winter as I have all summer!
