How to Make Organic Avenue’s Probiotic Coconut Yogurt

After becoming so obsessed with Organic Avenue’s probiotic coconut yogurt, I decided I should try making it myself. Organic Avenue isn’t that close to my office or my apartment, so it was becoming increasingly inconvenient to make a trip to Organic Avenue to pick up the probiotic yogurt. I tried looking up some recipes online but most were for paleo dieters and used coconut manna instead of coconut meat. Coconut manna *is* coconut meat, but it also includes a lot of the coconut cream and is much thicker and has a very different consistency than the coconut yogurt from Organic Avenue. So, here’s my recipe that is very close to Organic Avenue’s:

Ingredients:

– 1 container coconut meat, defrosted (Exotic Superfoods is the only brand that has the young coconut meat that you need to make this yogurt)
– 1/2 container raw coconut water (you don’t have to buy raw coconut water, but Harmless Harvest’s raw coconut water is so good that it’s kind of difficult not to buy this in bulk)
– 1 tablespoon coconut sugar (any kind of sugar is fine)
– 4 probiotic pills; the probiotic pills I bought were 14 billion good bacteria/pill
– 1 teaspoon vanilla powder (this can be found online or in a health food store)

All you have to do is defrost the coconut meat and place into a blender:

Blend with the juices in the coconut meat container and also add 1/2 the container of raw coconut water. The consistency should be pretty smooth:

Next, add the probiotic pills (break the pills and just use the probiotic powder), sugar and the vanilla powder, blend until smooth and place into a glass bowl:

This mixture needs to become yogurt by letting the probiotics activate. You can do this in two ways: 1. place in the oven and turn the oven light on or 2. place in the warming drawer and turn the warmer onto medium. You want the drawer to be around 100 degrees so the probiotics can do their work; too cold and the probiotic won’t do anything, too hot and the probiotics will die. I tried doing one batch with my oven light but the thermometer I placed into the oven only read about 90 degrees, so I find working in the warming drawer works better.

After 8 hours (yes, you have to let it sit for 8 hours), the mixture will have a dried layer on top and the sides might look a little bubbly:

You’ll want to place this in the blender one more time (so you don’t have to discard the dried layer), and then it’s ready to be refrigerated and eaten!

My version of coconut yogurt is on the left and a new container of Organic Avenue’s coconut yogurt is on the right:

The yogurt I made tastes just like Organic Avenue’s; now I don’t have to trek all the way uptown to get my probiotic coconut yogurt snack! One container of coconut meat makes about 3.5 Organic Avenue containers of yogurt. The cheapest I’ve found the coconut meat is online, directly from Exotic Superfoods; it’s $9 for one pound (but you have to buy in bulk!)