A Moment in M.O.M.'s Kitchen- Making butter

Have you ever made fresh butter from the cream of your own cow or a friends cow? If so, you know there is nothing that tastes as good! I often tease my daughter, Rebekah, that food just isn't worthy of the table if it doesn't have real butter in it!

We have made butter in the past by simply skimming the cream off our milk and putting it in a mason jar and shaking and shaking and shaking and shaking! It is time consuming but I have found that children enjoy the job! The 'trick' that I have learned in making butter is to make sure you get all the liquid out. We don't leave a droplet of this by product in our butter. If you do your butter will soon taste and smell like dead fish. Keep draining the liquid off as you shake. Work your butter into a ball and place in a ziploc bag in the refrigerator to harden up. If you like salted butter, stir in just a pinch to your butter before you store in the refrigerator.

Another 'trick' I have learned is that my DLX mixer is much easier and faster than the mason jar! Sarah-Grace is my butter maker. Every other day she takes the cream we have collected off the top of our drinking milk and turns it into wonderful butter! An important 'trick' to making butter is to make sure your cream is about 60 degrees or so otherwise it will just whip up and not turn into the desired butter. We do make our family desires of whip cream too but that's another conversation. The mixer can produce butter in about 8-12 minutes. We simply put the cream in, turn the timer on and cover the bowl. When we come back in 8 minutes we drain the liquid off (we save ours for other uses) and use our spatula to wipe all the butter off the sides of the bowl. We add a pinch of salt and stir again for a minute or so. Once it is complete we clean the bowl of all our beautiful butter and form into balls. We normally make one pound of butter every other day sometimes a little more. We are careful to remove all the droplets of liquid from our butter before we store it in ziplock bags in the refrigerator or freezer. We do freeze our butter so we always have some on hand for large baking days.

Making butter is really one of the easiest things to do. The children have a great deal of fun too! Try it and let me know how your family enjoyed the experience!
With much love,
Mrs. Joseph Wood