In a thread at another venue, one of our readers asked if I made my own butter  Shamed, I was.  Make my own butter?  Sounds like a good way to spend more money for less!  And it is pretty much that.  It will depend on the prices you pay for the cream.  Live on a dairy farm?  Home free!  Er, except for the getting up early every day and working all day long.  I am resolutely refusing to total the expense.

Started with a quart of heavy cream, ended up with the equivalent of 3 sticks of butter and a cup and a half of buttermilk.

I started the process with the whisk on medium speed to keep the splashing to a minimum, speeding things up as the cream thickened.  You will note a color change as the slideshow goes along, it is a real change – not some artifact of the lighting.  I changed to the mixing paddle when the “break” took place.  That’s what I will call the point where the buttermilk separated from the butter.  You will want to squish the butter to the side and pour off the buttermilk at this point.

Next, I poured in some ice water and mixed that a bit, then poured the water off, and then did it again.  This is to rid the butter of the buttermilk.  Discard this liquid.  I scraped the butter into a sieve over the sink and let it drip a while, then started to pack the butter into my measuring cup, this presses more water out, keep pouring it off.  I repacked the butter into a small plastic container with a lid and popped it into the fridge.

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