Yogurt with poppy seeds and marzipan

One of the things on my to-do list every time I visit Germany is to stop by a supermarket to pick up a giant glass jar of Ehrmann’s poppy seed-marzipan yogurt. I don’t know who came up with the combination of yogurt, poppy seeds and marzipan, but it really works. In fact, it’s probably on the list of the 10 best things I ever ate.

Well, luckily, I don’t have to wait for my next trip to Germany to eat it again, because I recently bought myself a yogurt maker and came up with a recipe that is, dare I say it, even better than Ehrmann’s yogurt. I’m using goat milk for my recipe, but you can use cow’s milk in place of it if you don’t have access to goat milk. It should be whole milk though, because the high fat content is what gives it its richness. If you don’t have a yogurt maker, feel free to skip this step and just mix the ingredients into plain yogurt (Stonyfield makes a wonderful rich plain yogurt that would work perfectly with this).

Ingredients:

2 cups homemade goat yogurt (or plain whole milk yogurt)

2 tbs plain marzipan

1 tbs sugar

1/4 cup whole milk

1/4 cup poppy seeds

Heat the milk in a small sauce pan. Cut up marzipan into small chunks and add it to the warm milk. Add sugar to the mixture as well. Let everything come to a boil and use a whisk to break up the marzipan pieces. When the mixture is nice and creamy, take it off the heat and let it cool for 10 minutes. Take the yogurt out of the refrigerator and carefully mix the marzipan cream and poppy seeds into it. Fill into little jars and refrigerate for at least two hours before serving.

Plain marzipan is not easy to come by here in the US. It is usually sold in the baking section during the holidays, but Amazon also sells it year-round. You could supplement the marzipan with a couple of drops of almond extract to get a similar flavor. I have tried this and it works as well.