I made some butter
A week or so ago, the blogger known as Crunchy Chicken went and did something rather unusual. She made her own butter, in her own kitchen, without any special tools or gizmos. And she made it sound like so much fun that I wanted to try, too. I bought myself some heavy whipping cream for something else, but knew that I didn’t need to use all of it. So...whatever I didn’t use would be reserved for butter making.
Tonight, I made my own butter out of 1 cup of heavy whipping cream. Following Crunchy’s directions, I left the container of cream out on the counter for about 4 hours. Then I poured it into a mason jar with a securely fitting lid.
Then...I shook the jar back and forth. Not too vigorously, but slammed the cream up against both ends of the jar with a pretty good jolt. It took about 2 minutes before I had a lot of thick whipped cream in the jar. I kept shaking. At about the 6 minute mark, I had some kind of solid chunk in the jar going “thunk-thunk” against the ends of the jar as I shook.
And, at about 8 minutes, lo and behold, the sides of the jar cleared off, the solid chunk in the jar was bright yellow and it was surrounded by a thinnish white liquid (whey).
I poured the whey into another bottle and kept shaking. More whey separated from the hunk of butter. I poured that off and repeated a few more times until no more whey showed up in the jar. At that point, I had this:
I still have to complete Steps 9 and 10 of Crunchy Chicken’s directions, but I was so thrilled I had to take pictures and show you. I Made Butter! And I gotta tell you, this stuff tastes so good...makes the grocery store stuff resemble yellow cardboard by comparison. Who knew that making butter could be so easy? I didn’t even break a sweat. Oh man, this is tasty stuff. I can’t keep my fingers out of the butter jar.
I think he’d get a real kick out of it, too. Better have some nice warm rolls or a loaf of banana/cinnamon/his choice bread waiting. He’ll want to smear his butter on something when he’s finished. 
Posted by Kate on 02/08/08 at 02:35 PM
Looks like we will have to make some bread too. He loves to make bread. Better get my errands done today so we can devote the day to it tomorrow lol.
Did you find out when J is having her surgery?
Posted by justme on 02/09/08 at 07:34 AM
The bread will definitely take longer than making the butter. But can’t have one without the other. I wish I’d thought of that before I made my butter. ;)
The other J has to be up there a half an hour after you. I’ll be running back and forth for a while keeping tabs on both of you. I hope you’re in roughly the same place. You both had to land on the same day. Of course.
Posted by Kate on 02/09/08 at 04:33 PM
E will be there. I hope they don’t make me wait a half hour before I go in, so I probably won’t see you in the morning. My surgery is going to take a good part of the day. He will have my cell so you can just call him and see how things are going if you like. I certainly don’t want you to have to sit around all afternoon.
Today is E’s birthday so the BC and I have added a cheese cake making to the mix today. I think I am going to be too busy today to even think about tomorrow lol.
The girls took me (I say took me because GC1 drove, scary. She drove the bohemian lol. She even parked it well. I put my foot down on her wanting to parallel park it.) out shopping so we could get him birthday gifts. And so I could get him something for Valentines day as I will be in the hospital for it. I am hoping to smuggle it into my care bag so he will be surprised lol.
Tell J my thoughts will be will her as they wheel me in LOL.
Posted by justme on 02/10/08 at 07:19 AM
Very cool! I’m glad you had fun - it certainly makes regular butter taste not so good.
I’m totally spoiled now and will probably only use regular butter for baking where I need a lot or it’s too difficult to measure it.
Posted by 
Hey Crunchy. All I can say is thanks for the inspiration and pointing the way. I had some of my delicious butter on a baked potato last night and I sat there thinking the potato was just the excuse for eating the butter. The flavor was unbelievable.
Posted by Kate on 02/10/08 at 03:36 PM
That’s cool. I made butter as a kid in the girl scouts. Very satisfying.
Hi Lorinda. It is a good activity for kids. A good activity for grown ups, too, though. I never before realized one could make butter in a jar. I always though it involved a butter churn. I’m pretty ruined for grocery store butter now. It’s a good thing homemade is so easy to make.
Posted by Kate on 02/13/08 at 07:16 PM
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Oh that looks like fun. I will have to get some whipping cream when I go shopping today. I think it might be something the BC would have fun doing.