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Clean Eating Vanilla Yogurt
Vanilla yogurt can be used everywhere. well, almost. It’s great in smoothies, on it’s own, on top of apple pie or pancakes or sprinkled with fruit and nuts.
The store bought version is usually full of preservatives or too high in sugar. We have a cheat, clean version that we eat in our home. Technically, it’s not even vanilla – but it works.
Is Yogurt Clean Eating?
Many of the yogurts I used to buy in the store made me think they were a healthy food to be giving the kids. They didn’t outright lie to me of course, but I didn’t know what to look for on the package and I just sort of thought, yogurts healthy, right? Wrong, actually.
As it turned out after I ‘knew’ better’, the yogurts that were a staple feature in my fridge had scary amounts of sugar in them, flavored with fruit flavoring and most had never even looked at a real piece if fruit. And so I stopped buying them.
I’m not against sugar at all, we didn’t quit sugar when we started our Clean eating journey, but I do need to know what sugars the kids (and us!) are eating, and be okay with them. Since I didn’t even recognise most of the ingredients list of the yogurts I was buying, I started to mix my own. And you know what? The kids didn’t even notice :)
Clean Eating Greek Yogurt
The exception to the rule of store bought yogurts is Greek yogurt. Full fat, always. I’d bought this in the past for one recipe or another but always found the taste a little tart, as did the kids who flatly refused to eat it. I put chopped fruit in it, granola, you name it, and they wouldn’t eat it.
And then as if by magic…..all it took was a spoonful of Maple syrup to get the little angels thinking I’d given in and gone back to their favorite store bought Vanilla breakfast yogurt, and who am I to put them straight?!
Adding a spoonful of Maple syrup per serving is really very little compared to what they had been having and more importantly, I knew what it was they were eating.
To start with, terrified they’d catch on and start whinging again, I mixed this up when they were in bed. They did catch on at some point, but by then they were addicted!
Grab the FREE 18 Meal Ideas CHEAT SHEET Here!What To Eat With Vanilla Yogurt
Breakfast, snacks, on puddings, this sweet yogurt is pretty versatile. Mostly we have this for breakfast, in a pot, scattered with granola. This homemade peanut butter granola is especially popular :)
Other things you might have this Clean Vanilla yogurt with:
One thing, I don’t recommend heating this. Greek yogurt, like all yogurts is temperamental when heated and when I’ve tried to heat this (seemed like a good idea at the time!) it curdled. Hmmm.
How To Keep This Yogurt
If like me, you decide to start off making this ahead of time, simply mix up the amounts you need and keep it in an airtight food container in the fridge. Make a not of the expiration date of the Greek yogurt you’re using and use this date as your best before.
I really like these glass food storage containers. I also sometimes make these up as little pots and these are just like the ones I have. There’s something about an individual mini sized serving of anything that seems to encourage little kids to eat what’s in it, plus you can customise the pots to each child.