After all the Christmas palavalava, I thought you might be ready for something simple and old fashioned. Nothing is simpler to make than butter. There is only one ingredient… CREAM! (And a touch of salt at the end if you want it to keep a bit longer.)
Butter – my favourite! My cream came straight from the cow. Yours can come from the supermarket. Try to avoid anything that says Ultra Pasteurised. You want Heavy cream, Whipping cream or Double cream or just plain CREAM. Depends which country you are living in.
Bring your cream up to room temperature first. This is important.
You can make butter in your Kitchen Aid or Food processor. I have done both with success, the only thing to watch for in the Mixer is that when the butter coagulates, the left over Buttermilk will fly all over your kitchen walls. So pay attention. The Food Processer works very well too, however do not overfill. Small amounts at a time. I will use my new Butter Churn. Here are the blades hanging to dry.
You can also make butter by half filling a jar with the cream. Put a tight lid on it and give it to someone else to shake. Some shakers add a marble to help beat it up! Kids in Kitchens love this!
You need to beat that cream until it begins to seperate, then beat a wee bit more. Here are the stages to watch out for. 
Whipped cream. Keep beating or shaking. Get your finger out of there!
Not quite.
There. You can see that the butter is very seperate from the buttermilk. Now, strain through a cheese cloth. Keep the buttermilk for pancakes. 
Wrap the butter in the cheese cloth and wring it out, then while it is still in your cheesecloth rinse it in icy cold water, wringing it out as you go. 
Empty the butter into a small bowl, add a little running ice cold water and work with a fork, then pour the liquid out. Do this a few times. You are separating the butter from the liquid. The water helps you wash it out. This is why the water needs to be icy cold. If you want the butter to keep for more than a few days make sure you wash all the whey out of the butter. Add a few pinches of salt or none if you choose. (Though the salt also increases it’s shelf life.) Refrigerate.
Make sure you have a little freshly baked, home made bread and Voila!
This is a great way to introduce kids to fresh food and fun in the kitchen. They do especially like the shaking method, they just pass the jar on when their arms get tired!
Simple is good.
I will wish you Happy New Year tomorrow! We are not quite finished with this year yet. One more 2011 Farmy Day! Daisy is writing her New Years Resolutions. Hmm.
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
95 responses to “Back to work you lot! How to make Butter at Home!”
I never knew until I read this post how butter was made or that it could be made in a blender or food processor. I bet it tastes one hundred times better than the mass produced packs found in supermarkets.
It has a much subtler taste.. a simple taste.. c
I have already told my husband how you make fresh baked bread each day. When I wake up every morning, my husband asks how I sleep. If I say that I woke up at 2 A.M. and couldn’t go back to sleep, he says that he doesn’t smell bread baking. Now he will also ask if I churned some fresh butter.
Oh dear.. best not to let on then!! SShh.. mums the word!..c
I once made butter, back when I was a teenager and my mum was in her gentle-lady farmer phase. The food processor part we had down. It was the rinsing, straining and salting that went poorly. You can imagine the result. To this day I just can’t handle the smell of melted butter. Maybe I need to reacquaint myself with friendly cows….
you could make butter with your kids (when they all reconvene).. and tell your mum.. i am WITH her on her gentle lady farmer phase.. send her out here.. we will be just fine!.. c
Last time we made it (while sitting around a campfire, as I’m sure you recall), we overfilled the jar. And by “we” I mean someone other than me. 😉 The kids shook, and shook, and shook, and it was still just cream. I finally poured some of the cream back into the carton and we tried it again. In no time at all, we had our butter. Mmmm…
AND you had a marble in there too as I remember!! ! c
You make it sound so easy I’m tempted to try it, but I’d wind up with something that tastes and looks like modeling clay. I just know it. Instead, I’ll live vicariously through your pictures.
It honestly IS that easy and really it is more or less impossible to get wrong.. have a great day! c
Oooooooooo you are killing me with all of this homemade goodness!!! Just too too yummy! t
It is Miss T.. c
Great “how-to” post Celi. As I once mentioned, I make my own and rely less and less on store-bought butter. And the walls around my stand mixer are getting a nice, shabby chic look & feel from all of the sprayed buttermilk.
I love that Shabby Chic look, I am working on that look too, I have already got the Shabby! c
Thank you Celia, you explain this so clearly, and the butter looks really yummy.
It is great butter, we are making pancakes again this morning too, with the buttermilk.. c
How fun! I just got a Kitchen Aid for Christmas so I can’t wait to start making all kinds of fun things, including butter!
What a fantastic present, you are going to be having tons of cooking fun now!! c
Might try this with the kids and have them give it a shake and swirl!
Oh do Harold, it is a great thing to make on a rainy day.. c
It has been *(unnamed number of years)* since I made homemade butter, but I remember thinking the shaking method was so easy it was surprising we didn’t do it all the time. And then of course we never did it again. Ahem! Okay, go ahead and give me a big ol’ kick in the pants. Is it whining if I argue that I’ve found a really gorgeous, delicious, dessert-all-on-its-own organic, pastured butter available ready-made?
I agree completely.. if you can get butter that good without breaking the bank then don’t even think about making your own.. Lucky you too!! c
Oh my.. this is like the mecca of food post.. Homemade Butter! Yes, I would love to make some homemade butter and slather it on just about everything. Absolutely :). I hope you have a great New Year
Thank you Kay, Happy NY to you too! All over soon.. c
This is brilliant, except cream is impossible to find in France, unless you are a farmer which I’m not. We have the most wonderful butter here, but cream is as rare as hens’ teeth – in fact it would be easier to make hens’ teeth necklaces than 1/2 lb of butter! Have a great New Year.
How interesting that you cannot buy cream there, what do they do with their cream?, though if you can buy good butter then why bother to make your own. The butter in england was good stuff too, it is a lot like NZ butter.. c
You make it sound so simple!
Looking forward to reading Daisy’s new year resolutions………. Hapy new Year 🙂
Daisy has been hard at work Getting fat lately, so i am hoping that she will cooperate and do something inspiring! c