Mint Chocolate Chip Frozen Yogurt

Self serve frozen yogurt shops have popped up on nearly every corner in Atlanta.  They seem to be the hottest trend lately and they probably rival Starbucks for most number of shops per square mile.    Personally, I love the whole self serve concept.  I get to sample the flavors before I make my selection and then I control the amount of yogurt that I want to eat because I put it into my bowl myself.  The choice of toppings varies from store to store but typically there is fresh fruit, candies, chocolate chips, sprinkles and cereal.  I've even seen crumbled bacon as a topping!




I decided to officially jump on the frozen yogurt bandwagon and try my hand at homemade frozen yogurt. 
 
Before you get too excited, I feel I should warn you that my first attempt at homemade frozen yogurt was underwhelming.




I found a recipe for frozen yogurt in my Good and Fresh magazine.  I was pretty sure that I could come close to the delicious soft serve frozen yogurt that I get in the stores.

Frozen Yogurt
3 cups plain low-fat yogurt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 teaspoons vanilla
salt

Combine yogurt, sugar, lemon juice, vanilla and salt. 

 

Freeze yogurt in an ice cream maker.  

When frozen, stir in flavors.  I decided to make mine mint chocolate chip since I have been dying to use my mint chocolate plant.   I cut some off, chopped it up fine and stirred it into the frozen yogurt.

To add some more intensity to my mint CHOCOLATE ice cream, I chopped up a dark chocolate bar and stirred that into my frozen yogurt as well.

I scooped my frozen yogurt into a Tupperware container and put it into the freezer.







After a few hours of chill time, I took the frozen yogurt out of the freezer and scooped it into my bowl. 

So, my frozen yogurt needs some tweaking.  First of all, it was waaaaay to sour.  I think that maybe the recipe was printed wrong and it should have said 1/4 teaspoon instead of 1/4 CUP of lemon juice.  The yogurt itself had enough tartness and it really didn't need much more acid added to it.  I also made the mistake of not chopping my mint fine enough.  I liked the flavor of the chocolate mint but big pieces of mint leaves in my yogurt - not so great.

All in all, my first attempt at frozen yogurt wasn't a total disaster though.  I ate most of it, mainly because I didn't want to waste a perfectly good dark chocoalte Cabdury bar just because it happened to be mixed with super tart yogurt. 

For now, I am going to stick to the self serve yogurt shops.  If you have a good recipe for frozen yogurt that you think I should try, send it to me.  I'm not giving up my quest for homemade frozen yogurt yet.

Ciao!