Two Ways to Use your Homemade {or store bought} Plain Yogurt

I made a big batch of yogurt over the weekend. I hadn't done that in a long time. I forgot how easy it is...and somewhat exciting to see your milk transform into yogurt in just a few hours.   The recipe makes quite a bit of yogurt, so I decided to use half of it to make "cream cheese"  (see update below...lets call it greek style yogurt)!!
I have never made my own "cream cheese" before and after looking at a few recipes online, I decided to give it a try. It took maybe 10 minutes of my time (and lots of hours of waiting).
Here's how I did it:
Line a strainer with a piece of cheesecloth or a very thin piece of clean fabric (or a thin kitchen towel)

Place that over a bowl

Pour in your plain yogurt (whole milk works best):

and stick it in the fridge overnight.


In the morning, the yogurt now looks like this:

And the bowl underneath now has all of this in it:

I believe this liquid is called "whey" and has lots of nutritional value. I saved mine, but I don't really know what I will do with it.  

Scrape your "cream cheese" out

Find a super cute little mason jar:

    And fill it up

The cream cheese is much runnier than the store bought stuff.  But, I think it will still work and taste the same in recipes, as a dip or whatever!  You could also just eat it plain and it would probably be similar to a greek style yogurt.

Done!

**UPDATE!! After attempting to use this like regular cream cheese in a recipe, I'm not sure if it can be categorized as cream cheese. I think we will now call this greek style yogurt!**

With my other batch, I made some honey vanilla flavored yogurt.

Just pour in some vanilla (I didn't measure, just pour some in and then taste it)

Add some honey and maybe some berries

And you have homemade vanilla honey yogurt with nothing artificial! Yum!

This would also be delicious with some homemade granola!