Homemade Pinkberry

So, I did it. I bought an ice cream maker! It’s a cuisinart ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet maker that I purchased from Bed, Bath and Beyond on Friday night. Chris and I were eager to try out my new machine (I was a little too eager, actually). There’s a self-cooling feature that makes the ice cream maker very user friendly, but you have to make sure the liquid inside the container is actually frozen (otherwise, it won’t work). When we got home, we put the container in the freezer right away and put the freezer at the coldest setting. Two hours later, there was no noise when I shook the container, so I thought I could start experimenting (even though Chris wanted to wait until the morning…what can I say – I’m impatient!). I found a recipe for frozen yogurt that is supposed to be very similar to Pinkberry’s – it’s so easy, how could we not have tried it?! Making the ice cream is a cinch – all you need to do is pour the ingredients into the container and press the on button. Twenty minutes later, you have yourself a nice bowl of frozen yogurt! Our frozen yogurt:

My ice cream maker makes a big bowl of ice cream/frozen yogurt/sorbet and is so easy to make! Look at how much “Pinkberry” yogurt we made:

AND, no skimping on the topping (Chris went to Chinatown on Friday after work and picked up mangoes and blackberries):

Doesn’t that look fantastic? The texture of our frozen yogurt is pretty similar to Pinkberry’s, but we’re still working on the tanginess. Also, you need to add a lot of sugar to make it – we didn’t add a lot, but you’re supposed to otherwise the frozen yogurt will get too icy. On second thought, it might’ve been a good idea to not add too much ice to begin with since Pinkberry’s frozen yogurt is pretty icy to begin with. We also bought strawberries to make our perfect Pinkberry dessert:

I’m going to try more recipes next week – lemon basil sorbet is my next on my list!