Butter is delicious. I spent the first 24 years of my life not eating butter, and then I made the incredible discovery that my body had no reaction to organic dairy! A few years later we got our first dairy cow, and I found out how easy it is to make butter!!
Fresh, organic, raw butter is now our favorite thing, and a big part of the motivation to milk Princess Buttercup every day, come rain or shine(or snow)! If you have access to fresh cream, you especially have to try this! But butter can also be made with heavy whipping cream from the grocery store.
You are welcome to find an antique butter churn and do it like Ma Ingalls, but I prefer to use my Kitchen Aid or a Blender. Much faster and less labor intensive!
If you are starting with milking the cow, then you will need to let the cream rise and skim it off the top, or use a cream separator. If you are using heavy cream from the store, you can jump right to the next step. Google says that a quart of heavy cream will make you about two cups of butter, or 4 sticks. I think I get a little less than that, so Buttercup milk must be a little lower in fat than the heavy cream from the store. It is also easier to make butter from fresh cream that is a few days old.
Butter Making
Step 1: Put the cream in the bowl of the kitchen aid, or into the blender. I don’t do more than a quart at a time in the blender because during the whipped cream stage it stops working. Turn your Kitchen Aid with the wire whip mixer attachment on to level 10, and if you are using a Vitamix, level 4 works best for me.
Step 2: Watch and wait. First it will turn into whipped cream, and as it keeps going, eventually it will break, and the butter will separate out from the buttermilk. This takes about 2 minutes in my Vitamix, and a little longer in the Kitchenaid. It shouldn’t take longer than about 10 minutes.
Step 3: Next, give it a rinse in cold water and spend some time working all the buttermilk out of the butter. An ice bath and a wooden spoon can be helpful.
Step 4: I shape mine into a stick of butter shape using parchment paper and store it in the refrigerator or freezer(depending on when I am planning on using it) wrapped in parchment paper or plastic wrap.
Fresh butter will last for about a week on the countertop, three weeks in the refrigerator and can last for up to a year in the freezer, but may not taste as good after about 4 months.
I hope you enjoy your delicious, homemade butter! I just think its the best thing ever, and we use it for everything!
