This recipe combines heavy cream and milk for a homemade yogurt that is low carb and high fat. Truvia is the perfect sugar-free sweetener, and vanilla adds to the sweetness as well.
Making this recipe Keto-friendly
Despite constantly posting recipes for baked goods, I am a big believer in the keto diet. I typically eat keto during the week and then eat whatever I want on the weekend. But as a lover of sweets, there were a lot of things I missed. Vanilla Greek yogurt was one of them. Simply making whole milk yogurt was not working and was kicking me out of ketosis. So I devised this recipe by changing out some of the milk for heavy cream. Sounds weird, but tastes normal. Promise.
Yogurt is actually a very carby food. My beloved Chobani Flips have about 25 grams per serving, which is actually not bad. Plain old strawberry Yoplait has 33 grams! Greek yogurt tends to be lower in carbs because it is strained to remove the whey, which has carbs in it. Whole milk yogurt is also lower in carbs because as dairy products become fattier, they do down in lactose, which is a sugar. (Which I guess is why lactose intolerant people can still eat cream and butter?) But one cup of plain whole milk Greek yogurt, the lowest carb type of yogurt available, still has 9 carbs per cup serving. With no sweetener! ARGH.
So to bump the carbs down even less, I substituted 20% of the whole milk with heavy cream, which has zero carbs. This brings us down to 7.2 grams of carbs per cup. This is actually a big deal when you are trying to stay as low as possible.
I tested a few different sweeteners and liked Truvia the best. It is not all-natural, so if that is important to you, stevia was okay too.
Making the Yogurt
If you’ve never made yogurt before, you may want to watch the tutorial here that shows you what each step looks like.
There is no greasy taste or feel to this yogurt, although as you heat and cool the milk it is going to look a little weird. (This is the case with making any yogurt, but especially this one.). There will be a little fat visible from the cream, but after you incubate and strain the yogurt it will look perfectly normal.
I use this ultra-simple yogurt maker but the method is the same as making yogurt in any other way, only the ingredients have changed.
Video Tutorial:
Now to turn yogurt into Greek yogurt, it has to be strained. You can use cheesecloth or coffee filters, but I’ve found this reusable strainer to be well worth it.
As far as sweetening goes, it does not work to sweeten the yogurt in bulk and put it in the fridge pre-sweetened. It gets watery and weird. I wish it worked! But you will need to sweeten each individual serving right before you eat it. At that point, you can add vanilla, berries, sugar free candy. (Here are some ideas for toppings.)
Here’s the recipe!
Ingredients
Yogurt:
- 4 cups whole milk
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons active yogurt (or packaged starter)
To Flavor Before Serving:
- 1 dash vanilla
- 1 teaspoon Truvia per cup of yogurt
Instructions
- Heat milk and cream to 180 degrees over double boiler over low heat. Skin will form, leave it alone for now. This may take up to 45 minutes.
- Remove milk and cream from heat and allow to cool to 90-110 degrees. Remove skin when it forms.
- Remove 1/2 cup of the cooled milk and mix in your yogurt starter. Then add the starter mixture to the rest of the milk.
- Pour into yogurt maker and set timer for 8 hours. To check if yogurt is done, put a spoon in the container. If it stands up, it is ready.
- Pour yogurt into stainer and refrigerate while it strains. This will take 12-18 hours. The longest it strains, the thicker it will be.
- Store Greek yogurt in one container in the fridge or portion out into small mason jars. Before serving, sweeten to taste (1 teaspoon of Trivia per cup of yogurt is a good starting point) and add vanilla if desired.
Nutrition
Want more Keto recipes?
Well I am far from a Keto food blogger, but I do eat low carb during the week.
Some of my favorite recipes are my Keto white chicken chili. and chicken breast topped with this red pepper and goat cheese topping.
Keto friendly keto yoga: If its cultivating in yoga maker longer eg 24hrs does this use up more of the carbs. I know it makes it more acidic. If its very thick is it still necessary to strain to be true greek yoghurt?
yes, in theory the longer it ferments the fewer carbs. I don’t know if there’s a limit. straining it helps to reduce the carbs as well because it removes the whey, which has sugars
Excellent recipe! I used my Instant Pot instead of a yogurt maker but otherwise followed your instructions. It was such a great “shelter in place” activity, with such a big payoff for my health and my tastebuds, that I had to share it with my Facebook peeps. Thanks for your contribution to my Ketogenic way of eating!
so happy you liked it brandy and I’m glad to hear it worked in the instant pot, I’ve been wondering that!
I have been trying to do this diet for a good three months I take keto supplements two a day and they have helped my weight enormously … als my energy … Also my moods … an overall plus
I do not wish to loose too many kilos but the energy I have is doing me so much good mentally … excellent .,. My only disaster is the pasta and the Greek coffee yoghurt ….. I have these on weekends
One question please answer is there a pasta that complys with keto diet ? And what about Greek coffee yoghurt ?
Tks always Myriam
Hi Myriam,
To flavor the greek yogurt, I like the Torani brand sugar free syrups. They do have a coffee flavor.
I’ve never tried any low carb pasta, so I can’t help you there, sorry. You could try a spiralizer and do zucchini strands.
TRY Shirataki noodles. These saved my life when I had a noodle craving. They are cooked a little different, but they can be added to most pasta dishes. try it out!!!
thank you I had never even heard of them but I just ordered some!!
Am I perhaps reading this wrong? In the bottom of the whole recipe it’s @7carbs per half a cup and within the recipe it says you should get a full cup for about that amount of carbs. Can you please clarify which one this is? Will it lower the carbs to make the whole thing out of half-and-half? Have you ever done this?
Rita,
7 grams per cup is correct. The reason there is a discrepancy is because my nutrition plug in simply adds up the carbs of the ingredients… but when you make greek yogurt, the whey is strained and discarded, which significantly reduces the carb counts. BUT I really need to find a way to make the label accurate since the carb count is central to the recipe. Thanks for bringing this up to me I am working on it now!
Katie
About the half and half.. for some reason the brand of half and half I have (a store brand) has a really high carb count. So I’ve never tried it.
My wife and I have been doing Keto for about two months and I have lost 13 pounds. We use Monk Fruit Sweetener for a sweetener. Would that work in this recipe?
Yes!! My mom uses it. Since you are adding the sweetener after the yogurt is made, anything will work.
This sounds absolutely delicious!! I’m just beginning to think about carbs and how they are effecting me. Thank you for the tutorial. Could you use commercial yogurt as your active yogurt?
Can’t wait to try this! One of the two thing I wanted to try. The other was sourdough starter. So now I’m ready to try my hand at yogurt! Great post! Great video!
Thank you Angela!
I have never thought to do Keto on the weekends and break a bit during the weekend. I love that idea!
Yes it helped me sooooo much mentally
Looks good! I am totally ignorant about the keto diet, my husband and I were just talking about it on Friday, he was educating me on what he knew. Very interesting!
It is so interesting! My husband did it for a year before I tried it. I thought it was so silly but it really helps you feel better! I have way more energy now.
Interesting. I personally try not to eat dairy but I think the rest of my family would enjoy this. May have to give it a try.