Butter!

Diane asked about the Sunday butter project.  Here's an answer in photos.

One pint of fresh cream from Blue Marble Family Farm transformed into eight ounces of butter.  There is also a sprinkle of sea salt in there at the bowl stage.  The entire process took less than 45 minutes because I do everything a bit slower than the average bear and I had a load or two of laundry that required attention.  The cream became solid in 15 minutes of shaking (and photography) in the jar.  The rinsing and stirring took more time.   Would I do it again?  Probably.  Will I do it all the time.  No.  The butter is very tasty and melts more rapidly than the "store" butter on toast.  DH and I both thought it was mild and, well, tasted like butter.  It was delicious on freshly baked bread.   I enjoyed the process and I'm glad I now have a "muscle memory" of sorts for butter-making.

This post was my original inspiration.  There are also numerous other references to butter-making on the Internet.   There's a bit more narration about the process in my Flickr set.

Comments

[opal]

that looks delicious!

[Nora]

Oh. Yum. Did you wind up with buttermilk, too??

[Julie]

I had that book from the library recently and have been meaning to try doing my own butter. My local cream is higher in protein so I wonder if it would work the same? Who knew that different cows have milk with different properties? Apparently Jersey cow milk has more protein and calcium than Holstein which is what most commercial milk is. With osteoporosis in my family history I've switched to all the Jersey milk based products that are available (as in milk, cream and butter. I really should try making my own yogurt with it as well)

[Stacey]

Looks like fun and like it tastes wonderful. You could get one of those paint can shakers to make it easier! Just sayin'

(said in the best WI accent I can muster) Why don't ya use a butter churn?

:D

/runs

[Judy G.]

In Grade 8 Home Econoomics class, we accidentally made butter that was supposed to be whipped cream (it's lumpy! Beat it some more!). I never thought of doing it intentionally!

[Kim]

It's like buttah!

I couldn't live without butter. No margariane or butter substitute for me. Nothing like th real thing.
You must've got quite the work out shaking the butter jar around.

[Carrie]

Wonderful! I baked the buttermilk bread from the 5 minute book the other day, and while it makes LOVELY grilled cheese, I ate most of it with butter. I wonder how homemade butter would be? I wonder if there are any dairy cows in Arizona (besides at the feed lots) where I could get some fresh cream?

[Cookie]

Woo Hoo!

I wish I had a dairy nearby. I haven't made butter since I was in grade school.

[kmkat]

Mmmm, butter. The kids and I did it once, but we used the KitchenAid. It never occurred to me to do it any other way ;-) But I didn't salt ours, and it went sour before we could use all of it.

[Amy]

Wow, that's so cool!

[Angie]

We used to make butter on the farm if one of our cows had lots of cream. I think most things would tast good on homemade bread- but I eat mine without butter now.How about some ice cream?

[Diane]

That cream looks so thick in the second photo that it should be able to stand on its own without the jar. I bet it would be good to pour on an apple crisp. Yum.

We made butter in grade school, but it didn't seem like a big deal because most kids I grew up with lived on a farm and their mother made butter regularly.