Making Our Own Butter Milk

Our first attempt at Red Velvet Cup Cakes failed because we used Cultured Light Buttermilk. It does not contain as much fat as buttermilk made from whole/full cream milk.

We tried to find “whole” buttermilk in lots of stores but could only find the exact same Cultured Light Buttermilk we already had.  No-one seems to sell whole buttermilk! We even tried Russian stores since Daddy like to drink it for breakfast.  We saw Kefir and other cultured whole milks but only light  buttermilk. 

So we decided to make our own …

We googled around for a recipe and found it was really simple to make. You can make buttermilk from buttermilk!  

We used some light buttermilk that we already had and we added some whole milk to it and put it in a jar near the kitchen window. 

Then we waited 24 hours for it to get thick.  (It’s called “clabbering”.  Isn’t that weird?)

And then we put it in the fridge. Ta da!

A couple of days later, we did a taste test with Daddy.   He drinks buttermilk all the time so he knows what it should taste like.  We put the store bought buttermilk in one glass and ours in another and asked Daddy to taste them without knowing which was which.

Daddy tasted light buttermilk first then (drum roll please) the “Annushka + Mummy” buttermilk. He could tell which was which without us telling him.  And he loved our buttermilk! He said it was a lot better than the light buttermilk and he wanted us to make it all the time! He said buttermilk and Red Velvet Cup Cakes would make a good breakfast!

It was an exciting experience. Rather “tasteylious”! 

See the full photo gallery.

Click here to read about how to make your own buttermilk.

Posted by Annushka in Cup Cake Trials and tagged with
  1. To make whole buttermilk, for those who don't want to wade thru the site to find it, it's simple.

    Take 1 part cultured light buttermilk and add 4 parts of whole milk. Put it in a glass jar with a tight lid. (You can get a Mason Jar or use an old spaghetti sauce jar). Leave it in a warm place to clabber for 24 hours then put in the fridge.

    We have a 20 oz Mason Jar with the measurements etched on the glass. So we add 4 oz cultured buttermilk and top it up with whole milk to make 20 oz.

    If it does not clabber (get thick) then your cultured buttermilk might not have been fresh enough, meaning the bacteria is no longer active. So always start with fresh buttermilk.

    We are going to experiment to see if we can just keep topping up our mason jar to 20 oz every time we get down to 4 oz. Will report back …

  2. Annushka says:

    We made it a second time with the same Light Buttermilk we had before. IDaddy said it was still OK to drink. We topped it up with a little of our leftover buttermilk so it was not quite the same as before.

    This time the taste was a bit more sour than before. Mum did not like it. She liked the first one but not this one. Daddy said it was good but it was more sour than the first.

    We all liked the first better. So next time we make it we'll use fresher light buttermilk I think.

  3. Annushka's Mum says:

    We made buttermilk a few times since then but I have to confess we did not keep making it got Daddy! But now the news is out that FAT IS GOOD FOR YOU we are going to start making it again.