In these cases, failure tasted pretty good!

I really like yogurt for breakfast! I decided a couple months after arriving I would try to make some yogurt. How hard can it be? I went to the local cafe and ordered some yogurt. I asked for 1 small bag, but somehow ended up with 4. huh? Oh well. I'm not sure if its the owner's lack of French ability or my inability to speak it well. So I go home and follow the recipe that I had. Excited, I retrieve it after its 'sit' time. It doesn' t look quite right. Its all curdy and tastes really sour. I put it in the fridge, hoping maybe time will make it into something worthwhile. It turned out I was right. A month later, my friend came by and I asked her, " Is there anything I can do with this yucky-looking curdy stuff"?? She tells me how to strain it for a few days. The result: cream cheese!YUM!Interesting how something that looking so unwanted ended up being a special treat. For Chris' birthday he usually likes cherry cheese pie. This was perfect! He ended up with a whole cherry cheesecake.
I tried a second time and well.. we ended up this month with another treat (no yogurt again, try try again). This time the cream cheese has been make into yummy frosting for homemade cinnamon rolls!
The good news is that I FINALLY did figure out the secret to making beautiful, yummy yogurt!

Here is the recipe I use:
1 cup hot water (not boiling)
1 cup cool water
1 cup milk powder
-mix, then add 1 Tablespoon yogurt starter (I used the last little bit from the previous batch).
Cover, then put in a warm place (like under blankets and towels in your bed) for 5-6 hours.

Usually I mix in a bit of sugar and a bit of vanilla flavoring then sprinkle some granola on top.

In this case I'm glad about my failure because then I never would have known that I could have cream cheese here or how to go about making it! A special thanks also to my friend Suzanne who gave me the "secret" to making successful yogurt here!