Making Butter

I was reading Little House on the Prairie to the kids before bed one night and the chapter was about how Ma Ingalls made homemade butter in a churn. I thought it would be fun to give it a try... minus the churn of course. I bought heavy cream at the grocery store the next day and we set about making homemade butter.

 Homemade Sweet Cream Butter Recipe

2 Cups of heavy whipping cream

optional: 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon salt

Place in a jar and shake, shake, shake for a very long time...

or use an electric mixer like I did. It takes about 30 minutes this way. Add salt in the mix towards the end.

1) Cream just poured into the bowl and beginning to mix

 

2) Getting thicker.. notice how the cream clings to the beaters

  

 3) Getting much thicker and the beaters are making folds. 

I mixed my salt in at this point.

  

4) Starting to turn a little yellow and a lot thicker

  

5) Turning even more yellow and crumbly now.

  

6) Really crumbly and the buttermilk has separated.

The butter is now ready to be squeezed free of the buttermilk.

  

7) Squeezing the butter to get all the buttermilk out. If any milk remains,

it will make the butter bitter and turn rancid faster. You can save the buttermilk for a recipe that calls for it.

  

 8) I pushed the butter into a little Tupperware storage container.

  

A lot of work and expensive for such a little amount of butter, but very yummy!!

 

The last thing we did was toast some bread and try the butter. It sure tasted good and the kids had a lot of fun and could understand how Ma and Laura Ingalls made homemade butter. I think I want to try and find a butter press/mold just for the fun of it!