Making Butter

I was reading through my favorite blogs and Fiber Fool had a great post about making her own butter. I really wanted to try it for myself. A lot of people told me that they made butter in Girl Scouts and shaking cream in a baby food jar. Yes, that works but this would let me make around a pound of my own butter that I could use and share.

I live in a small town but we have an organic store. It is small but they carry milk and cream from a dairy in an even smaller town. I should have taken pictures before pouring the cream out!

I put the cream in the bowl for the KitchenAid and covered it to keep the dog hair out. I wanted to let it warm up a bit.

Then I added the whisk attachment and turned it on the 6-7 level. It took a full 30 minutes for the cream to separate and become butter and buttermilk. I was worried for a bit because I thought that somehow I had messed up the process. Once the butter formed I was so thrilled!

Here is my butter after the milk had been pressed out of it. I didn't have butter paddles to press out the milk but my mom-in-law, who just happened to be here that day, used wooden spoons and that worked perfectly. You can use the buttermilk for any recipe that calls for it.

It was a fun project and the kids got a kick out of it. We also made bread in the bread machine and used the butter on it. I recommend you check out Fiber Fool's Blog to get a much better description on how to make it.

I also think you should check out my knitting blog to see the hats I've been making.