Real blueberry frozen yogurt, like the recipe you’ll find here, is creamy, tangy, and full-bodied and contains few ingredients other than pure yogurt and something to sweeten and flavor it naturally. Though the fro-yo business has become a multi-million dollar affair, many products on the market are little more than junk food, loaded with hard-to-pronounce ingredients and unwholesome sweeteners and lacking in probiotic profile (and then you top them with gummy bears).–Leda Scheintaub

Blueberry Frozen Yogurt FAQs

Do I have to use full-fat yogurt?

Well, yes. Reduced-fat yogurt is more watery and quite a bit thinner than the full-fat stuff. You’ll find, first and foremost, that your fro-yo is icy rather than creamy. In full-fat yogurt, the extra fat replaces the water—fat freezes very differently. Deliciously differently, in fact. You’ll also find that reduced-fat frozen yogurt will freeze into a solid block very quickly.

Can I swap lime juice for the lemon juice in this frozen yogurt recipe?

Yes. One of our testers used lime juice in her blueberry frozen yogurt and was delighted with the flavor. You may not want the full 3 tablespoons. Start with less and adjust to taste.

Four scoops of blueberry frozen yogurt in a wooden bowl with a spoon resting beside it.

Blueberry Frozen Yogurt

4.84 / 6 votes
Homemade blueberry frozen yogurt will taste like the yogurt that went into it; make your own or use a good-quality brand for a truly cultured frozen dessert.
David Leite
CourseDessert
CuisineAmerican
Servings12 servings
Calories88 kcal
Prep Time15 minutes
Cook Time15 minutes
Total Time3 hours

Equipment

  • Ice cream maker

Ingredients 

  • 3 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
  • 1/3 to 2/3 cup honey, depending on the sweetness of your blueberries
  • 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • Pinch of fine sea salt
  • 3 cups plain full-fat yogurt

Instructions 

  • Combine the blueberries, honey, and lemon juice in a medium saucepan. (The exact amount of honey depends on how tart your blueberries and how sweet your sweet tooth.) Place over medium-low heat and cook until the blueberries soften and the syrup that forms starts to thicken, 10 to 20 minutes (if you're using frozen blueberries, it may take a little longer).
  • Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the salt, and let cool to room temperature, about 45 minutes.
  • Dump the mixture into a blender, add the yogurt, and blend until fully incorporated. Taste and add more honey if needed, keeping in mind that your frozen yogurt will taste less sweet once frozen (cold mutes flavors). Place the blueberry frozen yogurt mixture in a resealable container with a lid, cover, and refrigerate until cold, at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours.
  • Process the mixture in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Spoon into an airtight container and freeze for at least 2 hours to allow the texture to firm slightly before serving. (The frozen yogurt is best served within hours of churning but rest assured it will keep in the freezer for up to several days without turning into an impenetrable chunk of purple ice.)

Adapted From

Cultured Foods For Your Kitchen

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Nutrition

Serving: 0.5 cupCalories: 88 kcalCarbohydrates: 16 gProtein: 2 gFat: 2 gSaturated Fat: 1 gMonounsaturated Fat: 1 gCholesterol: 8 mgSodium: 29 mgFiber: 1 gSugar: 14 g

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

Tried this recipe?Mention @leitesculinaria or tag #leitesculinaria!
Recipe © 2014 Leda Scheintaub. Photo © 2014 William Brinson. All rights reserved.


Recipe Testers’ Reviews

This brilliant blueberry frozen yogurt is really delicious. Even a few days after churning, the texture is fairly good (it’s not a solid frozen block). It feels like a somewhat virtuous dessert…tangy and refreshing and naturally gluten-free. I’ll definitely make this again over the summer. I made this with a homemade 2% milk yogurt. It would be better made with full-fat yogurt, as the recipe specified. I strained my yogurt for about 30 minutes prior to blending.

As I was getting everything together, I noticed that I didn’t have lemons but had limes, so I made that substitution and found that it still tasted really nice. I used 1/2 cup honey instead of 2/3 cup because I ran out. To me, the finished product was sweet enough. I’ll reduce the honey again the next time I make this recipe. I didn’t have fresh blueberries so I used frozen, and they took a little longer to cook, as they needed to thaw at the same time.

I loved this simple and healthful homemade blueberry frozen yogurt recipe. It was perfectly sweetened because of the fresh berries and honey. (I actually used 1/2 honey and 1/2 agave syrup because I ran out of honey.) Easy to make, this just takes a bit of planning in terms of cooling time and then freezing time. But it’s definitely worth the wait; also nice to know that it’s in my freezer for whenever we crave this delicious blueberry frozen yogurt over the next week or so. Fun to make and very, very tasty. I’d like to try the recipe again, maybe with a mix of berries.

Yay! This one really won over my best critic and taster, who declared it “the best frozen yogurt I’ve ever had!” The intense color and flavor matched the tangy and not overly sweet taste. Use organic blueberries and your best organic whole-milk yogurt for this. The result is deep purple and, even more importantly, deeply blueberry flavored without all the sugariness of so many commercial fro-yos, which are barely yogurt at all.

This is not a custard ice cream, it is perfect frozen yogurt. Tastes like this are exactly why you make frozen desserts at home. I’d absolutely serve this to guests if they got here before we ate it up. This is an easy recipe to pull together over the course of 2 days without much actual time involved. I made the base the night before, and tasting my blueberries, which were very nicely ripe and sweet, reduced the honey to 1/4 cup (60 milliliters or 2 fluid ounces), then tasted it after blending with the yogurt. I decided that was plenty sweet for us. I wonder if some folks might even sweeten it with a bit of banana in place of honey to meet their nutrition models?

It took 1 hour the night before, then 15 to 20 minutes churning time, and 2 hours to stabilize in the freezer. We had to be patient to wait until the next day to eat it and it was perfect. Do be careful if you don’t have a huge blender or ice cream freezer as it will be close to capacity. I only had to turn the very full blender on for a few seconds but I did take the precaution of holding the lid down with a folded tea towel. My ice cream maker is a 1 1/2-quart Cuisinart, the type that has a freezer bowl you have to freeze overnight. I stopped at 15 minutes of churning as the frozen yogurt was climbing the top a bit. It was at the soft-serve stage then. I’d say this recipe actually yields closer to 1 1/3 quarts. It can be done in small equipment, but just be aware.

Okay, so I like frozen yogurt and have been experimenting for a while with a basic vanilla frozen yogurt. This turned out really well. The taste was good, it was easy to make, and the family liked it. It was hard to tell if the syrup was thickened. I went ahead and cooked it for the 10 minutes in the recipe and it worked well. It took a long time to cool; if I did this again, I’d cool it in the fridge. I did need to add more honey if you use plain yogurt because it won’t be sweet enough. I would make it again and I might even play with other flavors.

I omitted the blueberries from this recipe as I didn’t have any and I prefer the taste of plain yogurt—even frozen. This is a pure, simple, refreshing dessert at its best. It’s not too sweet, just tart enough. I could eat quarts of this stuff if I’m not careful!

I cooled the yogurt mixture in the fridge for 2 hours, mixed it for 30 in my KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment, then put it into the freezer. I tasted it after 1 hour, at which point it was awesome—it was very slushy and melted quickly, kind of like soft-serve in its consistency. After freezing it overnight, I found that it became very hard—not at all creamy like the day prior or like ice cream. It was almost icy or slushy and was hard to break apart with my spoon. But it only took a few minutes to soften up, so don’t let this deter you.

I’ll definitely make this frozen yogurt again but I won’t add as much lemon juice. My yogurt was Strauss plain and full-fat, which is my favorite thing in the world. After tasting the mixture before refrigerating it, I thought it was much too sweet but as the recipe explains, it ends up being okay once frozen. Still, I’d try a tad bit less honey next time and probably drop the lemon juice down to 2 tablespoons, as I imagine most of that was to temper the blueberries. So good. So good!

Frozen yogurt is almost breakfast food. It’s almost as easy as making a breakfast smoothie and about as healthful. This dessert is extra guilt-free because you have complete control over the ingredients. I chose a great-quality yogurt from the grocery store, but I didn’t like the fresh blueberries on display. I’m happy to report that a bag of frozen blueberries was exactly the correct quantity as well as completely delicious. I think they threw off a little more liquid than if they were fresh, so I was careful to cook the berry mixture until it was starting to thicken instead of just setting the timer for 10 minutes. On medium-low heat, this took more like 20 minutes.

I did find that I needed to add more honey (a few tablespoons) before freezing. Though it does freeze harder than store-bought frozen yogurt, the flavor is very berry and just-right-tart, and I have to mention how sublime the deep purple looks with a dollop of whipped cream. I’d serve this to company, maybe alongside sips of limoncello, without any regret. Start the night before (including freezing the ice cream canister) and give yourself 16 hours if you want to serve this after dinner.

My kids think I’m a rock star for making this delicious dessert and I’m loving that it’s healthy enough to eat for breakfast. Love it. I used 3% plain organic yogurt and some fantastic honey from my sister’s beehive.

Blueberries are in season here, and the ones I had were quite sweet, so I started with 1/2 cup honey, which turned out to be plenty sweet. I would definitely start with less honey and add as you go. I have a Cuisinart ice cream/frozen yogurt maker and it took exactly 30 minutes of processing to reach a good consistency. This tasted fantastic and I can’t wait to try it with other fruits as the seasons change.

To appreciate this homemade blueberry frozen yogurt recipe, you need to understand what it is and, more importantly, what it isn’t trying to be. This isn’t trying to be like commercial frozen yogurt, nor is it trying to be a substitute for ice cream. This is not a dessert you want to make for a child’s party. It’s full-on tangy, barely sweet, very blueberry. And I love it.

If, like me, you’ve ever enjoyed a serving of Greek yogurt with fresh blueberries piled on top and a thin drizzle of honey, you’re in luck. This recipe is that very snack, morphed into a frozen dessert. I took the author’s advice and used homemade yogurt made from full-fat milk. This frozen yogurt is great right out of the ice cream freezer. If you store it in your freezer, it will get very hard, so pull it out and let it warm up just a bit before trying to scoop it.

There’s really no good reason why a person shouldn’t just toss a container of yogurt into an ice cream maker. And there’s really no good reason why a person shouldn’t shake up said yogurt with blueberries. It’s easy and divine. Here’s the thing: If you use quality yogurt and in-season blueberries, you don’t need more than 2/3 cup of honey. That’s not a lot of sugar, you guys. No crazy toppings needed. Maybe just sprinkles.

A couple of things. I used medium heat and kept those blueberries at a rollicking boil for a good 15 minutes. It reduced to a lovely sweet-tart syrup. I also learned that a 32-ounce container of yogurt is a bit north of 2 1/2 cups. Oh well. It still ended well. The frozen yogurt scoops like a dream. No annoying thawing needed. Instant gratification, indeed.

I received an ice cream machine for Christmas and love having easy excuses like this recipe to use it. With only 4 ingredients that even my two-year-old can recognize and can pronounce, I have very little mommy guilt in making and serving this often. I ended up adding about 2 extra tablespoons of honey beyond the 2/3 cup as we aren’t quite into blueberry season here yet in the Midwest. Otherwise, the recipe is pretty straightforward and works as written.

I was excited to try this homemade blueberry frozen yogurt recipe for a few reasons, including the fact that blueberries are plentiful and because it’s sweetened with honey. It took only a few minutes at best to prepare the fruit and I cooked it for 12 minutes. Once the mixture was cooled, the blender did all the work.

I added a little more honey to make it a bit sweeter and used homemade plain yogurt. I chilled the mixture for approximately 4 hours before putting it in the ice cream maker. I was amazed and thrilled at how delicious the final product was. This recipe would be safe on SCD, which means it’s safe for people with Crohn’s disease.




About David Leite

I count myself lucky to have received three James Beard Awards for my writing as well as for Leiteโ€™s Culinaria. I’m the author of The New Portuguese Table and Notes on a Banana. For more than 25 years, I’ve been developing and testing recipes for my site, my books, and publications. My work has also appeared in the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Bon Appรฉtit, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Yankee, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and more. I’m also a cooking teacher, memoirist, and inveterate cat lady.


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7 Comments

  1. 5 stars
    EXCELLENT!! I ran across this recipe by accident and couldn’t wait to try it. This was so easy to make and turned out exactly as shown. I had a scant 2/3 cup of honey, but it didn’t suffer. I think I’ll try cherries next and see how that turns out. YUM. Thanks!

    1. Dave, terrific to hear that you enjoyed it so! And I love your idea to try it with cherries next. Kindly let us know how that works! And thanks so much for taking the time to let us know how much you enjoy the recipe, Dave.

  2. I’ve made this with juneberries in place of the blueberries and the results were phenomenal, with such a vibrant color. Juneberries are in season…now!

    1. Superb, Chris. Yeah, makes sense. Juneberries are in season in June. BTW, love the idea of your popcorn. Can’t wait to try pimento cheese. And “Ramped” Up popcorn, with real ramps. Dang, sorry to have missed that.