We started with 32 oz of heavy whipping cream and a large glass jar. I had heard that putting a marble in might help with agitating the cream, but I was afraid it might hit the jar wrong and we would end up with a huge mess! Instead, I just put a heavy plastic kids spoon.
Next came the shaking....... lots and lots of shaking. To brake up the monotony we alternated between jogging around the room with it, rolling it back and forth on the floor, and practicing counting by ones, twos, tens, and hundreds while vigorously shaking. After about ten minutes it didn't feel like the cream was moving much anymore. Our view through the glass was a solid white jar. When I unscrewed the top it looked like super smooth whipping cream.
After another 5 minutes the cream began to break up a bit.
2 minutes later it began breaking up even more and we could see through the jar again. Then we suddenly had butter! The buttermilk began to separate out and we had a huge lump of nice yellow butter in our jar.
We used a strainer to pour the buttermilk off. The buttermilk is actually sweet, rather than the sour stuff you buy from the store, since the cream wasn't soured beforehand. The kids each had a small taste and we are left with 1 1/2 cups for cooking.
After separating the butter we rinsed it by covering it with clean cold water and kneading until the water was discolored. Then we poured off the water and repeated for a total of 4 rinses. This helps to remove the remaining buttermilk and prevents the butter from becoming rancid.
We were left with a little over a cup of yummy butter! I did find that this butter was a little bland and I think that might have something to do with the ultra-pasteurized cream we used. I would love to try this using cream from raw milk, but that would be a little cost-prohibitive and difficult to find. Next time I might look for low pasteurized cream or try making cultured butter with yogurt. For now I think I will add some fresh herbs and enjoy our freshly homemade butter!
Oh, that looks yummy!! A pinch of salt will help with the bland taste. Just a tiny bit will do. I'm also thinking a smidgeon of honey would be good for a change!
ReplyDeleteI am glad you like the book "If I Ran for President". We are doing Ping this week. We love making butter too.
ReplyDelete[...] made butter during the course of our study which has nearly replaced the purchase of butter at the store. My [...]
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