Making Our Own Butter

I can’t believe it’s not not butter!

Today we made our own butter and this is our recipe.

Ingredients

1/4 tsp salt
 2 cups heavy cream

Ice cold water

Equipment

Electric Mixer
Wooden Spoon
Bowl
Spatula
Scales, optional

Method

Separating the butterfat

  1. Place cream and salt in a mixer with whisk attachment and mix at low speed slowly increasing to high speed as if whipping cream.
  2. Once you have whipped cream just keep whipping. You might need to scrap down the sides using a spatula. Eventually you’ll see the cream starting to look a bit like cottage cheese as the butterfat starts to clump together.
  3. When the buttermilk starts to separate from the butterfat pour it out into a cup and keep whipping a little longer.
  4. Stop when most of the buttermilk is separated.  You should have about 1/2 cup of butterfat and the butterfat should stick to the whisk.

All up this part should take 20 – 30 minutes.

Making a butter pat

  1. Place the butterfat into a bowl and make a hamburger shape.
  2. Pour from ice cold water on it. 
  3. With the back of a wooden spoon (or similiar) pat the butterfat to press the butter on the top and the sides like it’s play dough trying to keep the hamburger shape. as you press it more buttermilk should coms out and make the water cloudy white.
  4. Pour off the water and repeat step 3 until you are sure all the butterfat you is out. (*)

(*) Note: it is important to get all the buttermilk out of the butterfat. If you leave it in then the butter can go rancid. 

All up this part can take another 20-30 minutes.

Outcome

We put our butter in a plastic stick shaped comtainer we use for picnics and weighted it.  It weighed 3.7 oz including the weight of the container. We estimate it was about 3.5 oz of butter. We almost make a whole stick of butter.

We tasted the bits left in the bowl. It tastes just like butter.  It looks just like butter.  It smells like butter.   I can’t believe it’s butter!

See the full photo gallery.

Posted by Annushka in Cup Cake Trials