How did I not know this existed? It’s fun-looking, totally healthy, real food and easy to eat. Failure is the springboard to many great things and I found out about yogurt bark because I totally failed at one project and was trying to find redemption so I wouldn’t have to throw it all away.

Real Food Snack Challenge…Yogurt Bark for the win!

With school about to start, I’m wanting to find healthy breakfast, snack and lunch ideas.  My man-child is 6’2″ at the ripe old age of 14, and is about to start a high school baseball “career”. Feeding him is proving to be a full-time job especially because he has decided on his own free will, after a bad asthma attack, to eat gluten free. I’m grateful, because that makes three out of the four of us so far (my older man-child is the holdout and I’m hoping he will come around soon.) But finding enough food to fill him up without breaking the bank on meat or relying on bread is tough. This has lead me to a two-week binge on the internet looking for and printing recipes to try these last couple of weeks of summer and see what wins for the school year rotation. Of course I am really good about forgetting that I posted several snacks in the past such as Protein Bars and Coconut Truffles.

Yogurt Bark for BLD

Yogurt bark will certainly be in the rotation as I had to tell him to quit eating the finished product so I could get photographs. He has now eaten them straight out of the freezer for breakfast, snacks as well as pre-lunch (while he is warming up his lunch) and pre-dinner (while I am finishing up dinner).

Yogurt Bark Backstory

The original recipe I was testing was raw milk yogurt. I’ve made it numerous times in the past, but I was trying a short cut to the thick, Greek yogurt by adding gelatin instead of having to strain it. The result was a yogurty tasting Jello substance. Not pleasant at all especially for the 14 year old man-child whose appetite is driven by texture. I was looking for a frozen yogurt recipe to use it up and came across these beautiful little jewel

Once you’ve tried these versions, you can just get creative, using fruits (dried or fresh), nuts and cereals you have on hand or if you aren’t feeling creative and want more inspiration, try these:

• Add cocoa powder to the yogurt as in this Chocolate Banana Yogurt Bark
• Blend berries or other fruit into the yogurt before adding toppings
• Drizzle frozen yogurt bark with your favorite nut butter (warmed until pourable)
• Or mix in nut butter as in this Vegan and Paleo Chunky Monkey Yogurt Bark
• Go with the classics: peanut butter & jelly, berries & pistachios, paleo granola & honey

Yogurt Bark in Steps

Step 1: Mix the yogurt with honey or maple syrup

Step 2: Spread on a parchment covered cookie sheet (make however many sections you want to depending on what toppings you are using)

Step 3: Sprinkle on the toppings

Step 4: Freeze for 3 hours

Step 5: Break into pieces and serve

Yogurt Bark Tips and Tricks

If you want thicker bark, use a 9 x 13 rectangular pan. It will be a bit harder at first but won’t melt as quickly as the super thin ones I made (I barely had tim to shoot photos before I had to whisk them back into freezer to re-freeze). On that note, only take small pieces out or it will melt before you finish.  Another solution to the melting problem is to make yogurt bites by lining mini muffin tins with silicone mini muffin cups and filling half full with yogurt then topping. You may want to cut the recipe in half if you do this because I made 8 mini muffins with just the extra yogurt I had left. Finally, make sure you clear out a space in your freezer for the pan(s) to sit completely flat. I didn’t think this through at first (FYI, I tend to fly by the seat of my pants in the kitchen) and almost had another recipe failure of mixing all the different sections together!

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