Making Butter

Sounds silly, huh? Who goes out of their way to make  butter? The answer is US. And we are proud of it! We are on a mission to live on less this year and make more of what we can fresh.

Think about how much you pay at the grocery store for four sticks of butter. Roughly three dollars to four dollars, right? That is on the lower end of butter, too. Have you ever read what is in your butter that you buy though? Lets just say…if it sounds like a chemical it probably is and it is probably not good for you. Do you know how super simple it is to make your own? No? Want to learn? Of course you do!

Pour two cups of heavy cream into your favorite Pyrex measuring cup. I used the one we bought at the Orchard in the next town. Blue measuring cups were given out as factory tour gifts, as I have written about before. It measures four cups total and is super handy. So! Two cups of heavy cream and a teaspoon of salt (if you like salted butter…if you don’t, you’re probably ill).

Sorry for the blurriness. I can’t figure out why none of the pictures I took would focus…None that follow are blurry, I promise. Pour your cream and salt into the bowl of your stand mixer. You could do this with a hand mixer…but you would probably get tired of holding it.

Set your mixer to 10 and let it go! After about two minutes you’ll have whipped cream. Don’t taste it unless you enjoy salty whipped cream. Lower the speed or stop the mixer and scrap the sides. Then let it rip again. After another three minutes or so the cream will begin to break and the fats and solids will separate.

It will look something like this. You will have milky buttermilk at the bottom. Now…forming the butter can be icky. I tried it just by hand the first two times I made it..then had a brain blast in the middle of the night. Literally, I think I woke from a deep sleep and nearly got up to make some at 4 am.

Here is my new technique…

Cheese cloth! Because you need to further strain the buttermilk from your butter this will save you a lot of heartache and stinky hands. Pick your largest mouthed measuring cup and place your cheese cloth over it, holding it there with a rubber band. Very slowly, pour the contents of your mixing bowl over the cloth. Be careful, as cheese cloth may slip down…as mine did. Once all of (or as much will fit at the time) the curds are in the cloth, remove the rubber band and bring up the edges of the cheese cloth- form around the curds and SQUEEZE! Buttermilk will come pouring out into your measuring cup. The butter will need a few good squeezes to get all of the milk out but it is worth the extra hand work.

Make sure that you have on hand what you intend to put the butter in. We use Ball glass Mason Jars (an American kitchen staple for Lord knows how many years).

And there you have it! A beautiful jar of homemade butter. This jar is going to our friends Jesse and Hannah- hope they love it!

A few things to note…

* Fresh Cream is best. We get ours from a local farm called Coopers Hilltop. http://www.coopershilltopfarm.com/ they have amazing product, friendly workers, and affordable prices.

*Store bought cream will take longer to separate and may, in total, take 10 minutes to become butter.

*Do not under or over salt your butter. It is regrettable.

* Never think things are too hard to make at home…especially if you have a KitchenAid