Making Butter

Making Butter.

A friend of my oldest son saw my grandma's butter churn sitting on my living room floor, he asked me what it was for.  I explained that before the modern invention of electricity and machines,  people made butter from hand. Neither he nor my boys were convinced that the dusty antique sitting on my floor would turn cream into butter.  I set out on a hunt to find an easy way to show them that I was in fact telling the truth and that butter was actually quite simple to make, here is what I came up with.

Materials:

Heavy Cream

Salt

Baby food jars (with lids) or a small glass jar.

Nickels (one for each jar)

I took all of the jars, lids and nickels and boiled them in water for about 2 minutes, then I took them out of the water and let them cool until they were easily handled.

When they're clean, dry and cool.  Fill the jars half-full with  heavy cream (or half-empty if you're a pessimist.)  Toss the nickels into the jars and add a couple of dashes of salt, screw on the lid and you're set!

Once your jars are filled and sealed, give the jars to your butter-makers in training, and tell them to shake until they can't shake anymore!  My little's took about 10 minutes of shaking to turn our cream into butter.  Your arms will ache when you're done!

After about 10 minutes of shaking, you'll end up with something that looks like this:

This is the real deal, butter milk that has separated from the butter solids.  Liquid gold!  I put the buttermilk into a jar and use it to makes scones!

I took a thin (clean) kitchen towel, or cheese cloth ( I found the cheese cloth hard to use, the butter really stuck to it.)  Place the towel over a small bowl and scoop the butter and buttermilk into the towel, squeeze gently and the remainder of the buttermilk will drain into the bowl.  Put the finished product into the fridge to firm it up!

**this butter has no preservatives so enjoy it quickly, because it doesn't keep long; a week at the most!