Whether it is your favorite spoonable or drinkable yogurt, cottage cheese, cream cheese spread, or a sour cream-topped baked potato, we all enjoy eating cultured products. However, we often overlook their potential as ingredients in many of the foods we enjoy every day.  

Most of us are familiar with dairy ingredients getting the spotlight in buttermilk pancakes, biscuits, and salad dressings, but using cultured dairy products may not be as common. We see the name “yogurt” used in compound coatings covering nuts, pretzels, dried fruit, and granola bars, but this is powdered yogurt, which doesn’t have a standard of identity like yogurt does. Powdered yogurt is typically cultured skim milk that is dried, and it’s really your only option for low moisture/low-water activity foods like coatings, icings, and/or intermediate moisture foods like nutrition bars.