Make Your Own Butter
You know what goes really well with homemade bread? Homemade butter! And it’s really easy to make, especially if you have some bored helpers around.
Start with clean jars. You can use Mason/canning jars, of course. I just had these on hand and they’ll each hold a full pint of whipping cream.
Fill the jar about 3/4 of the way with cold Heavy Whipping Cream, screw the lid on tightly, and shake shake shake.
Of course, you can do this in your blender or even a Kitchen Aid (both work well), but the girls and I think making butter while watching a movie is 90% of the fun.
After about 30-40 minutes, the cream will stop sticking to the sides of the jar…
… and becomes butter and buttermilk.
Line a fine-mesh strainer with a double thickness of cheesecloth and place it over a bowl. Dump the jar into the cheesecloth. Pull up the corners of the cheesecloth around the butter and gently squeeze it to get out the excess buttermilk, but not too hard or the butter will start to come through the cloth.
You can gently run some cold water over the ball of butter, but I like to put it in a clean bowl and mash it up with a spoon while running cool water over it. Drain and repeat until the water comes out clear (the butter will stick to the bowl). This makes sure you’ve gotten all the buttermilk out and helps keep the butter fresher longer.
(Don’t throw away the buttermilk! Cover it and keep it in the fridge for pancakes. Or hey! Fried pickles!)
If you want salted butter, mix in some salt. I like to use popcorn salt because it’s very fine and you don’t need a lot of it.
About two cups of heavy cream will make one cup (or two sticks/half a pound) of butter.
Now, the one thing about real butter that I’m not crazy about is how hard it gets once it’s refrigerated. This will do the same thing. It’s nice and soft right now but it becomes hard as a rock once it cools down again.
The solution? Try a butter keeper.