I know I’ve blagged on about making your own butter before, but it really is so easy to do. We almost never throw away expired cream any more. I had a carton of pure cream (aka heavy whipping cream, 35% fat) which was past its use by date, so I spent a few minutes this morning turning it into butter. There was about 400ml of cream which made 170g freshly churned, lightly salted butter. Life is good…
The cream went into my mini food processor in two batches (photos taken of the second batch, which is why the processor bowl is dirty). My machine has a little whisk attachment that fits over the blade. You could just as easily use a mixer with a whisk attachment, which is what we do whenever we have a larger quantity of cream. If we do use the mixer, we switch from the whisk to the paddle attachment about half way through.
Add a pinch of salt, if you like. We find this helps the butter keep a little bit better.
After a few minutes of pulsing, the cream will split, leaving fresh butter and buttermilk (whey). The cream will whip up, then collapse, then split.
Give the butter a quick rinse to wash off the sour whey. Note that the leftover liquid is actually buttermilk, albeit a much thinner version of the stuff you can buy commercially. When we make a large batch of butter, I save the buttermilk and use it for baking.
Then smack it around a bit on a chopping board to get any residual liquid out. We use gnocchi paddles and a wooden board placed at a slight angle over the sink, to allow the liquid to drain off. The butter sticks less to wood than it does to plastic.
Here’s the final butter, shaped and ready to be wrapped in parchment paper and stored in the fridge. Our homemade butter doesn’t keep as long as the commercial version, but we use it for everything from spreading on steaks to baking cookies. And there is almost nothing like super fresh butter in mashed potatoes!
I made two-thirds of a cup of butter this morning – from cream that was due to be thrown away. Even just typing that makes me smile..
As the saying goes … Waste not want not.
This is excellent and I have all those items in my kitchen so I’ve no excuse anymore. I am a butter addict … people ask be if I would like ‘toast with my butter’. And my 2 year old eats it straight too. It would be a triumph to make it.
Gillian, I’ve read that traditionally butter was made from cream which had been soured.
I’m never game to let it go too far past its expiry date (and it’s always kept in the fridge), but we’ve found that the cream which has soured a little has a lovely flavour to it. What it does mean though, is that we don’t throw expired cream out – we just turn it into butter.
We still buy most of our butter, but it’s always nice when we have some homemade stuff to serve with sourdough bread. And the thrill of eating butter which is only a few minutes old almost never wears off for me… :)
Celia
tell everyone how you make rum and raison ince cream… I know you know how. it’s delicious.
Here you go: http://figjamandlimecordial.com/2009/10/07/rum-and-raisin-icecream/